NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured a striking view of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and turbulent southern hemisphere as it performed a close pass of the gas giant planet.
Juno is in a highly-elliptical, 53-day orbit around Jupiter. Each orbit includes a close passage over the planet’s cloud deck, where it flies a ground track that extends from Jupiter’s north pole to its south pole.
The Jupiter image gives a great view of the planet’s Great Red Spot, a persistent high-pressure region in the atmosphere of Jupiter, producing an anticyclonic storm, the largest in the Solar System. It is located 22 degrees south of the planet’s equator.
The image also captures a view of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere storms.
The grandest planet
Eleven Earths could fit across Jupiter’s equator. If Earth were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be the size of a basketball.
Juno took the three images used to produce colour-enhanced view on Feb. 12, 2019, as the spacecraft performed its 17th pass of Jupiter, NASA said.
At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was between 26,900 kilometers and 95,400 kilometers above Jupiter’s cloud tops, above a southern latitude spanning from about 40 to 74 degrees.
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill used data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager to produce this image. NASA makes the JunoCam’s raw images available to the public for processing.
Resembles van Gogh’s painting
Jupiter rotates once about every 10 hours (a Jovian day), but takes about 12 Earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun (a Jovian year).
Jupiter is a gas giant and so lacks an Earth-like surface. If it has a solid inner core at all, it’s likely only about the size of Earth.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft recently captured a new photo of Jupiter and it looks like Vincent van Gogh’s swirly masterpiece.
Last June, NASA green-lighted Juno an additional 41 months to explore Jupiter. The Juno mission, which will end in approximately three years, aims to explore the gas giant planet. With Juno, scientists can study Jupiter’s important characteristics, including its core, what it’s made of, and why it plays a part in solar system development. Additionally, NASA is expecting to send the Europa Clipper spacecraft to Jupiter around 2023, which will observe Europa, the planet’s mysterious icy moon.
Gigantic storm
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a gigantic storm that’s about twice the size of Earth and has raged for over a century. Its atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H2) and helium (He). In 1979 the Voyager mission discovered Jupiter’s faint ring system. All four giant planets in our solar system have ring systems.
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