ESA’s Juice spacecraft imaged on its way to the fly-by with the Earth – 9 Aug. 2024.
Almost one year and half after its launch, we imaged the ESA’s Juice spacecraft, having a fly-by with the Earth next 20 Aug. and going to explore the icy satellites of Jupiter, reaching it in 2031.
The Juice spacecraft, imaged on 9 Aug. 2024.
The image above comes from the average of two 120-second exposures, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″ + Paramount MEII + SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project. The telescope tracked Juice’s apparent motion, this is why stars look like short trails while the probe is a sharp dot of light, indicated by a grey arrow.
At the imaging time, the probe was at about 3.3 million of km and approaching. We estimated its brightness at mag. 18.5 (R, unfiltered). The fly-by will be on 20 Aug.
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