Juno's close pass of Europa on September 29 (1036 UTC) took it within 352 kilometers of the icy moon, marking the third close pass in history below 500 kilometers. The encounter saw the spacecraft come within a single kilometer of Galileo's 351 kilometers from the surface back in January of 2000, and it provided the opportunity for Juno to use its JunoCam to home in on a region north of Europa's equator. Note the high relief of terrain along the terminator, with its ridges and troughs starkly evident. Image: The complex, ice-covered surface of Jupiter's moon Europa was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft during a flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. At closest approach, the spacecraft came within a distance of about 352 kilometers. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SWRI/MSSS. This first image from JunoCam captures features at the region called Annwn Regio, and was collected in the two-hour window available to Juno as it moved past Europa at 23.6 kilometers per second. What we hope to gain from analysis of...

As the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) has just wrapped up in Spain’s Palacio de Congresos de Granada, I’m reminded how little time I’ve had recently to keep up with such gatherings. I do hope to have some entries on EPSC-announced findings in the near future. Today I simply note the news of an unexpected ‘heat wave’ (700?) extending 130,000 kilometers just below Jupiter’s northern aurora, one traveling at high speed toward the equator, as announced by James O’Donoghue at the EPSC. Says JAXA’s O’Donoghue: “While the auroras continuously deliver heat to the rest of the planet, these heat wave ‘events’ represent an additional, significant energy source. These findings add to our knowledge of Jupiter’s upper-atmospheric weather and climate, and are a great help in trying to solve the ‘energy crisis’ problem that plagues research into the giant planets.” I mention this work in particular because of my interest in the EPSC results but also because Jupiter has been on my mind thanks to...