A stunning new image of Jupiter captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft has offered a new perspective on the gas giant, with a view that appears to show the planet flipped on its side.
The striking vista features the planet’s famed Great Red Spot fading from from view, while the dynamic bands of the southern region come into focus.
It was captured using data taken with the JunoCam on July 10, as the Juno spacecraft performed its seventh close flyby of Jupiter.
The striking vista features the planet’s famed Great Red Spot fading from from view while the dynamic bands of the southern region come into focus. It was captured using data taken with the JunoCam on July 10, as the Juno spacecraft performed its seventh close flyby of Jupiter
When image was taken, the spacecraft was 10,274 miles from the tops of the clouds of the planet, at a latitude of -36.9 degrees.
‘North is to the left of the image, and south is on the right,’ NASA explains.
The astonishing photo was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran – JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process.
While many of Juno’s images have focused on the planet’s mysterious giant red spot, its little brother was also recently revealed in incredible detail by the probe.
Other recent images show the dynamic storm at the southern edge of Jupiter’s northern polar region.
Officially known as the North North Temperate Little Red Spot 1 (NN-LRS-1); it has been tracked at least since 1993, and may be older still, according to NASA.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager. It was taken on July 10, 2017 at 6:42 p.m. PDT (9:42 p.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed its seventh close flyby of Jupiter, and shows the North North Temperate Little Red Spot 1, the third largest anticyclonic oval on the planet which is typically around 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) long
The long-lived anticyclonic oval is the third largest anticyclonic oval on the planet, typically around 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) long.
The color varies between red and off-white (as it is now), but this JunoCam image shows that it still has a pale reddish core within the radius of maximum wind speeds.
An anticyclone is a weather phenomenon where winds around the storm flow in the direction opposite to that of the flow around a region of low pressure.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.
The image has been rotated so that the top of the image is actually the equatorial regions while the bottom of the image is of the northern polar regions of the planet.
Although the storm is huge, it is tiny compared to its ‘big brother’, the so-called ‘Great Red Spot’.
This violent storm, which in the late 1800s was estimated to be about 25,000 miles (about 40,000 km) in diameter – wide enough for three Earths to fit side by side.
The biggest storm in the solar system, it appears as a deep red orb surrounded by layers of pale yellow, orange and white.
A stunning new image of Jupiter’s tumultuous ‘Great Red Spot’ has revealed what it might be like to glimpse the biggest storm in our solar system up close. The image shows a natural colour rendition of the massive storm
Previous NASA releases have focused on Jupiter’s tumultuous ‘Great Red Spot’ has revealed what it might be like to glimpse the biggest storm in our solar system up close.
The image shows a natural colour rendition of the massive storm, based on data from the Juno spacecraft’s seventh close flyby of the planet, simulating how it would be seen by the human eye.
Juno captured the view from about 8,648 miles (13,917 kilometers) above the cloud tops using its JunoCam imager.
The new image was processed by citizen scientist Björn Jónsson, according to NASA, using data from Juno’s July 10 close approach.
‘This true-color image offers a natural color rendition of what the Great Red Spot and surrounding areas would look like to human eyes from Juno’s position,’ NASA explains.
‘The tumultuous atmospheric zones in and around the Great Red Spot are clearly visible.’
Just weeks ago, the space agency released the first images from the probe’s historic flyby of the ‘Great Red Spot.’
The probe, which has been monitoring Jupiter’s surface for just over a year, passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometres) above the Great Red Spot.
The first three unprocessed ‘raw’ images were revealed by NASA as a taste of the images to come, and space enthusiasts soon tweaked them to produce stunning images.
This is an early processed version of an image created by Gerald Eichstädt, using NASA’s raw data. It gives an unprecedented glimpse into the gigantic red spot of Jupiter
Another of Jason Major’s processed images, showing the cloud detail inside the gigantic storm (right)
‘Raw images from the Juno spacecraft’s flyby of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot are back on Earth,’ NASA said as it revealed the images.
‘We invite the public to act as a virtual imaging team, from identifying features of interest to sharing the finished images online.’
NASA is currently processing the images itself, and more are expected to be unveiled over the coming days.
‘After JunoCam data arrives on Earth, members of the public can process the images to create color pictures,’ it said.
‘The public also helps determine which points on the planet will be photographed.’
Experts have predict that the views of the storm will be breathtaking.
The data collection of the Great Red Spot is part of Juno’s sixth flyby over Jupiter’s mysterious cloud tops.
Tom Momary posted this version of the image, titled ‘Peering into the Great Red Spot…color enhancements and vibrance, to bring out detail’
Perijove (the point at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter’s center) was this morning at 02:55 BST (21:55 EDT yesterday evening).
At the time of perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops.
Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno covered another 24,713 miles (39,771 kilometers) and was directly above the Great Red Spot.
The spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds.
All eight of the spacecraft’s instruments as well as its imager, JunoCam, were on during the flyby.
‘My latest Jupiter flyby is complete!’ said a post on the @NASAJuno Twitter account.
‘All science instruments and JunoCam were operating to collect data.’
‘Raw images will be posted in (the) coming days,’ the space agency said.
Juno launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and has been orbiting Jupiter for just over one year.
Although NASA posted the ‘raw’ files online (see below) internet users soon enhanced them. This image was posted by Jason Major, who tweeted ‘They’re here! My first processed raw map-projected image of #Jupiter’s Great Red Spot from @NASAJuno’s P7 flyover on July 10-11 #GRSflyover’
The data collection of the Great Red Spot was part of Juno’s sixth flyby over Jupiter’s mysterious cloud tops.
Perijove (the point at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter’s centre) was this morning at 02:55 BST (21:55 EDT yesterday evening).
At the time of perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops.
HOW JUNO SNAPS A STORM 1.8 BILLION MILES AWAY
Juno reached Jupiter last year after a five-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey from Earth
The Juno probe reached Jupiter last year after a five-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey from Earth.
Following a successful braking manoeuvre, it has now entered into a long polar orbit flying to within 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of the planet’s swirling cloud tops.
The probe will skim to within just 4,200 km of the planet’s clouds once a fortnight – too close to provide global coverage in a single image.
No previous spacecraft has orbited so close to Jupiter, although two others have been sent plunging to their destruction through its atmosphere.
Juno’s main camera, JunoCam, captured images of the Great Red Spot, and will send them back to Earth by July 14, according to Scott Bolton, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and the Juno mission’s leader.
Mr Bolton said: ‘Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special.’
But taking images of the Great Red Spot isn’t as simple as pointing and shooting.
To capture the storm in detail, Juno must fly close to the storm – around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds.
Juno also flies at staggering speeds of 34 miles/second making taking steady photos a challenge.
Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno covered another 24,713 miles (39,771 kilometers) and was directly above the Great Red Spot.
The spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds.
All eight of the spacecraft’s instruments as well as its imager, JunoCam, were on during the flyby.
The fly-by comes just days after Juno celebrated its first anniversary in Jupiter’s orbit.
‘Jupiter’s mysterious Great Red Spot is probably the best-known feature of Jupiter,’ said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
‘This monumental storm has raged on the solar system’s biggest planet for centuries.
‘Now, Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special.’
Trapped between two jet streams, the Great Red Spot is an anticyclone swirling around a centre of high atmospheric pressure that makes it rotate in the opposite sense of hurricanes on Earth. Nasa’s Juno spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds
On July 4, Juno logged exactly one year in Jupiter orbit, and has chalked up about 71 million miles (114.5 million kilometers) in orbit around the giant planet.
‘The success of science collection at Jupiter is a testament to the dedication, creativity and technical abilities of the Nasa-Juno team,’ said Rick Nybakken, project manager for Juno from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
‘Each new orbit brings us closer to the heart of Jupiter’s radiation belt, but so far the spacecraft has weathered the storm of electrons surrounding Jupiter better than we could have ever imagined.’
During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet’s cloud tops – as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers).
During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
Early results from Nasa’s Juno mission portray the largest planet in our solar system as a turbulent world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora, and huge polar cyclones.
The image of a crescent Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot was created by a citizen scientist (Roman Tkachenko) using data from Juno’s JunoCam instrument, Nasa said.
The image was taken on December 11, 2016 as the Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter.
At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 285,100 miles (458,800 kilometers) from the planet.
Astronomers recently revealed that Jupiter’s ‘red spot’ storm, the biggest in the solar system, is shrinking.
The so-called ‘Great Red Spot’ is a violent storm, which in the late 1800s was estimated to be about 25,000 miles (about 40,000 km) in diameter – wide enough for three Earths to fit side by side.
The biggest in the solar system, it appears as a deep red orb surrounded by layers of pale yellow, orange and white.
Winds inside the storm have been measured at several hundreds of miles per hour, Nasa astronomers said.
Nasa revealed the find alongside stunning new maps of the planet which are the first in an annual series of ‘weather maps’ designed to spot changes.
Already, the Jupiter images have revealed a rare wave just north of the planet’s equator and a unique filamentary feature in the core of the Great Red Spot not seen previously.
‘Every time we look at Jupiter, we get tantalizing hints that something really exciting is going on,’ said Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
‘This time is no exception.’
Collecting these yearly images will help current and future scientists see how these giant worlds change over time.
This sequence of enhanced-color images shows how quickly the viewing geometry changes for Nasa’s Juno spacecraft as it swoops by Jupiter. The images were obtained by JunoCam. Once every 53 days the Juno spacecraft swings close to Jupiter, speeding over its clouds
The observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry.
Ms Simon and her colleagues produced two global maps of Jupiter from observations made using Hubble’s high-performance Wide Field Camera 3.
The two maps represent nearly back-to-back rotations of the planet, making it possible to determine the speeds of Jupiter’s winds.
The new images confirm that the Great Red Spot continues to shrink and become more circular, as it has been doing for years.
The long axis of this characteristic storm is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) shorter now than it was in 2014.
Recently, the storm had been shrinking at a faster-than-usual rate, but the latest change is consistent with the long-term trend.
The Great Red Spot remains more orange than red these days, and its core, which typically has more intense color, is less distinct than it used to be.
An unusual wispy filament is seen, spanning almost the entire width of the vortex.
This filamentary streamer rotates and twists throughout the 10-hour span of the Great Red Spot image sequence, getting distorted by winds blowing at 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second) or even greater speeds.
In Jupiter’s North Equatorial Belt, the researchers found an elusive wave that had been spotted on the planet only once before, decades earlier, by Voyager 2.
In those images, the wave is barely visible, and nothing like it was seen again, until the current wave was found traveling at about 16 degrees north latitude, in a region dotted with cyclones and anticyclones.
Similar waves – called baroclinic waves – sometimes appear in Earth’s atmosphere where cyclones are forming.
‘Until now, we thought the wave seen by Voyager 2 might have been a fluke,’ said co-author Glenn Orton of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
‘As it turns out, it’s just rare!’
The wave may originate in a clear layer beneath the clouds, only becoming visible when it propagates up into the cloud deck, according to the researchers.
That idea is supported by the spacing between the wave crests.