JUNO/JIRAM's view of Jupiter's H-3(+) emissions

This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Advances in hydrogen molecular ions: H-3(+), H-5(+) and beyond'.

The instrument JIRAM (Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper), on board the NASA spacecraft Juno, is both an imager and a spectrometer. Two distinct detectors are used for imaging and spectroscopy. The imager acquires Jupiter images in two bands, one of which (L band, 3.3-3.6 mu m) is devoted to monitor the H-3(+) emission. The spectrometer covers the spectral region from 2 to 5 mu m (average spectral resolution 9 nm) with a 256 pixels slit that can observe the same scene of the L band imager with some delay. JIRAM scientific goals are the exploration of the Jovian aurorae and the planet's atmospheric structure, dynamics and composition. Starting early July 2016 Juno is orbiting around Jupiter. Since then, JIRAM has provided an unprecedented amount of measurements, monitoring both Jupiter's atmosphere and aurorae. In particular, the camera has monitored Jupiter's poles with very high spatial resolution, providing new insights in both its aurorae and the polar dynamic. The main findings obtained by the L imager are detailed pictures of Jupiter's aurorae showing an extremely complex morphology of the H-3(+) distribution in the main oval and in the moon's footprints. The spectrometer has enabled the measure the distribution of both H-3(+) concentration and temperature. The analysis of the north auroral region limb observations shows that the peak density of H-3(+) is above 750 km and that often it is anticorrelated to the temperature, confirming the infrared cooling effect of H-3(+).