Juno's Earth flyby: the Jupiter infrared auroral mapper preliminary results

The Juno spacecraft has been launched on August 2011 with the goal of investigating the origin and evolution of Jupiter. JIRAM, the Jupiter Infrared Auroral Mapper on board the spacecraft, is a spectro-imager whose science objectives are the auroras' analysis, the atmospheric component gases retrieval in hot spots and the constraining of the Jupiter's formation environment through the study of the composition and the abundances of the chemical species in the Jovian atmosphere. To achieve these objectives JIRAM is equipped with a IR imager split in two spectral channels: L band, centered at 3.45 micron with a 290 nm bandwidth, and M band, centered at 4.78 micron with a 480 nm bandwidth, and a spectrometer in the 2.0-5.0 micron interval. JIRAM status and capabilities have been tested on 9 October 2013 during the Juno's Earth flyby. The instrument targeted the Moon for about half an hour. Beyond the scientific value of the observation, this has been so far the first occasion during the cruise phase to verify the execution of the science observing sequences as they will be operated at Jupiter. Here the first elaboration of that series of observations is presented. The imager in M band has been able to capture the Moon region straddling the terminator. Some surface features are recognizable and have been mapped with the support of the geometric information available for JIRAM data. Spectra from the most prominent surface structure visualized, are also shown.