Juno's Earth flyby: the Jovian infrared Auroral Mapper preliminary results

Abstract

The Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper, JIRAM, is an image-spectrometer onboard the NASA Juno spacecraft flying to Jupiter. The instrument has been designed to study the aurora and the atmosphere of the planet in the spectral range 2-5 μm. The very first scientific observation taken with the instrument was at the Moon just before Juno's Earth fly-by occurred on October 9, 2013. The purpose was to check the instrument regular operation modes and to optimize the instrumental performances. The testing activity will be completed with pointing and a radiometric/spectral calibrations shortly after Jupiter Orbit Insertion. Then the reconstruction of some Moon infrared images, together with co-located spectra used to retrieve the lunar surface temperature, is a fundamental step in the instrument operation tuning. The main scope of this article is to serve as a reference to future users of the JIRAM datasets after public release with the NASA Planetary Data System.