Juno, Hubble and James Webb observing Jupiter’s aurora

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of Jupiter’s aurora, supporting the Juno
mission, started on 30 Nov 2016. So far, they successfully covered orbits PJ03 to PJ06. After
PJ07 in July 2017, the HST campaign will be interrupted by a solar avoidance period,
preventing any observations from late August to the end of December 2017 (PJ08 to PJ10).
The campaign will resume with PJ11 and continue until the end of HST cycle 25 (PJ15).
Here, we present a brief summary of the HST data that has been acquired so far. It shows a
broad range of auroral morphologies, suggesting that the Juno mission is sampling di
ff
erent
facets of Jupiter’s magnetospheric activity. One should keep in mind that HST will not last
forever. We should be ready to switch to the James Webb Telescope and take advantage of
the overlap between the HST and JWST missions to prepare a smooth transition. The
numerous infrared observations of Jupiter’s aurora obtained from ground based telescopes
during Juno and obviously with Juno-JIRAM demonstrate that we can expect much from
the tremendous performances of the JWST NIRCam and NIRSpec instruments.