Nasa is crowd-sourcing where Juno points its camera, here is how you can photograph Jupiter

The JunoCam is a imaging payload on the Juno Jupiter orbiter by Nasa, that was added on specifically for engaging with the public. Although the JunoCam is strictly speaking not a scientific instrument, scientists will still be using the images captured by it. For the first time in history, Nasa is inviting the general public to select the sites on Jupiter that will be captured by the JunoCam. Interested readers can vote for the sites on the JunoCam voting web site. The voting will be open till 23 January. Candy Hansen, Juno co-investigator, says “It’s up to the public to determine the best locations in Jupiter’s atmosphere for JunoCam to capture during this flyby. The pictures JunoCam can take depict a narrow swath of territory the spacecraft flies over, so the points of interest imaged can provide a great amount of detail. They play a vital role in helping the Juno science team establish what is going on in Jupiter’s atmosphere at any moment. We are looking forward to seeing what people from outside the science team think is important.” The raw images will be available on the JunoCam web site, where users can process the images themselves. The images captured by JunoCam so far are already on the web site. The JunoCam is a colour camera that captures images in the visible light spectrum, approximating what humans would see if they themselves were in orbit around Juputer. On each orbit, the JunoCam can only select from a narrow swatch of territory on Jupiter. Nasa successfully put Juno in orbit around Jupiter in July 2016 , after a five year long spaceflight from Earth. It was the fastest spacecraft to attempt an orbital insertion maneuver, and the second solar powered spacecraft to reach the outer solar system. Since then, Juno has beamed back images of the poles of Jupiter , as well as pale white storms that spread across the gas giant in a formation known as the “string of pearls.” Juno is the wife of the Sky God Jupiter, who has the power to see through clouds.