The NASA space probe “Juno” contains many scientific instruments, but there’s one camera-telescope that’s on-board primarily for public science and outreach. Planetary scientist Candice Hansen will speak about it later this month at the University of Louisville.
Gerry Williger is an associate professor of astronomy at the university. Williger says Hansen has decades of experience in the field.
“She has been in the business since about 1979 — she’s worked on a number of missions, including the Cassini Mission, some Mars missions,” he says. “She spent a lot of her time at the Jet Propulsion Lab and she retired several years ago after about 30 years there.”
Now, Williger says, Hansen is the scientist in charge of what’s called JunoCam.
“And that is on a probe called Juno, which is in orbit around Jupiter,” Wiliger says. “And it is a very special instrument. It is there to take pictures, but the pictures are distributed to the public to put together and analyze.”
He says this is the first time that's ever been done. "We are learning a lot,” Williger says.
Hansen will speak to the public about the clouds, storms and other space phenomena that JunoCam has revealed since arriving at Jupiter’s orbit last year as part of her talk, “JunoCam: Pictures of Jupiter from a New Perspective.”
The talk will take place on Oct. 26 at 6:30 p.m. in Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Planetarium. The free, public talk is the annual Bullitt Lecture in Astronomy.
