Tell NASA which points of Jupiter you want Juno to spy

Washington

With NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully placed in Jupiter's orbit, the US space agency has invited amateur astronomers to upload telescopic images and help decide which points of the king of planets will be imaged during the mission.

Users can select a point of interest in Jupiter's atmosphere and share it with the community or browse through other users' suggestions and comment on them.

These points will form the foundation for the voting phase, during which people will determine the best locations in Jupiter's atmosphere that JunoCam will capture.

JunoCam is the visible-light camera aboard the Juno spacecraft that was launched on August 5, 2011. It was built by Malin Space Science Systems in the US.

The Juno spacecraft successfully entered Jupiter's orbit today after a five-year journey from Earth, in a giant step to understand the origin and evolution of our solar system's biggest planet.

"You will get a limited number of votes per orbit to devote to your favorite points of interest," NASA said.

Once JunoCam has taken the images that were voted on, they would be posted for processing.

Users can then download the raw images, process them with their choice of software and re-upload them to the site for other users to view.

Due to telecommunications constraints, Juno will only be able to return about 40 megabytes of camera data during each 11-day orbital period.

This will limit the number of images that are captured and transmitted during each orbit to somewhere between 10 and 1000. — PTI