High Energy and Juno's Stellar Reference Unit

This animation gives an X-ray view of the Juno spacecraft's Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) star camera (left) as it is bombarded by high-energy particles in Jupiter's inner radiation belts. Even though the SRU camera head is six times more heavily shielded than Juno's radiation vault, the highest-energy particles in Jupiter's extreme radiation environment can still penetrate, striking the imaging sensor inside. The signatures from high-energy electron and ion hits appear as dots, squiggles, and streaks (right) in the images collected by the SRU, like static on a television screen. Juno's Radiation Monitoring Investigation collects SRU images and uses image processing to extract these radiation-induced noise signatures to profile the radiation levels encountered by Juno during its close flybys of Jupiter. Animation available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24436