The Juno mission to Jupiter brings new data!

Juno mission to Jupiter delivers first science results last week. The photo below is from the JunoCam, a visible-light camera, about a NASA spacecraft.

This is a report from the Southwest Research Institute. In summary NASA’s Juno mission has been in orbit around Jupiter since July 2016, passing within 3,000 miles of the equatorial cloudtops. The mission was led by Dr. Scott Bolton.

King of the planets even more exotic than expected. “What we’ve learned so far is earth-shattering. Or should I say, Jupiter-shattering,” said Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator. “Discoveries about its core, composition, magnetosphere, and poles are as stunning as the photographs the mission is generating.”

The solar-powered spacecraft’s eight scientific instruments are designed to study Jupiter’s interior structure, atmosphere, and magnetosphere. Two instruments developed and led by SwRI are working in concert to study Jupiter’s auroras, the greatest light show in the solar system. The Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) is a set of sensors detecting the electrons and ions associated with Jupiter’s auroras. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVS) examines the auroras in UV light to study Jupiter’s upper atmosphere and the particles that collide with it. Scientists expected to find similarities to Earth’s auroras, but Jovian auroral processes are proving puzzling.

“Although many of the observations have terrestrial analogs, it appears that different processes are at work creating the auroras,” said SwRI’s Dr. Phil Valek, JADE instrument lead. “With JADE we’ve observed plasmas upwelling from the upper atmosphere to help populate Jupiter’s magnetosphere. However, the energetic particles associated with Jovian auroras are very different from those that power the most intense auroral emissions at Earth.”

Also surprising, Jupiter’s signature bands disappear near its poles. JunoCam images show a chaotic scene of swirling storms up to the size of Mars towering above a bluish backdrop. Since the first observations of these belts and zones many decades ago, scientists have wondered how far beneath the gas giant’s swirling façade these features persist. Juno’s microwave sounding instrument reveals that topical weather phenomena extend deep below the cloudtops, to pressures of 100 bars, 100 times Earth’s air pressure at sea level.

A dress fashioned with food waste

As a subscriber of National Geographic I’m often impressed with eco-minded designers.  This information is from an article written by Catherine Zuckerman, and the photo is courtesy of Rebecca Hale. To summarize, there is work being done in “farm to fashion”.  Sacha Laurin’s medium is a bacterial “colony” left after brewing tart fermented tea known as kombucha.  One dried, the material becomes a faux leather.  This California designer sews it into haute couture dresses. Isn’t this pretty– the Kombucha dress.

Spotlight on a writer who makes a difference– M.J. Neary!

Let me introduce you to a lovely lady, M.J. Neary who is on my blog for the simple reason that she is Good People.  Yes, that category exists on my blog.  Her birthplace is Russia, but now living in New England, USA, spoils her to Irish-Ukrainian American husband and tiger-moms  (her words) their son.  She’s immersed in democracy to such an extent that she publishes articles on all-things-that-matter for the current administration. M.J. Neary is proud to retain both worlds and with her broad knowledge, pens historical romance.

Where can we find this lovely lady? Connecticut where M.J. affectionately calls Disconnecticut. She confesses that she didn’t invent the word.  With events such as golf outings put on by the snooty crowd, a city such as Stamford doesn’t have the strongly Irish vibe of the past  Neary says young people want Irish rock with bands such as Drop Kick Murphys or Flogging Molly, although some of the younger kids learn Irish dancing.

Let’s get to Molly.  M.J. Neary played the part of Molly in a Wild Geese theater production of BLOOMSDAY. M.J. has also appeared at The Cell in New York City where she performed a 10-minute fragment of the play, THE LAST FENIAN.  The Cell is a marvelous venue. Below are photos of M.J. Neary with Phil Gardiner and one other Ifrom BLOOMSDAY.