The biggest planet in our solar system by far, Jupiter is still very much unexplored, with so much more to learn about its swirling storms, and highly active gaseous surface.
A recent flyby from NASA’s Juno spacecraft shows us more details of the planet, its 66th trip around the celestial body.
While Juno’s onboard cameras can take images, NASA does not have a dedicated team to process these for public view. Instead, it relies on citizen scientists, who readily spend dozens of hours processing, stitching together, and sometimes enhancing these images.
The result are some truly beautiful, detailed photographs, showing the dozens of smaller swirling storms, as well as the massive red spot, an ancient storm which has been active for over 300 years.
It’s hard to imagine a giant storm on earth lasting 300 years. This type of perspective shows us how astounding our own solar system can be.
We’re grateful for the help of these citizen scientists, who utilize the raw images taken by NASA’s orbiter, and make sense of them for the rest of us.
Our solar system’s largest planet is full of mysteries, but we are slowly unraveling them, thanks to some amazing science.
NASA’s Juno probe is one of those crafts helping to shed light on some of the amazing discoveries that the gas giant holds.
In orbit around Jupiter since 2011, the probe has given us a close-up look at the planet’s amazing system of storms, assessing its makeup, exploring the magnetic field that surrounds it, and so much more. Now more than ten years later, the probe continues to send back data and images.
Below are some of those, as well as some data-driven illustrations that further show the complexity and beauty of Jupiter.
The short video above illustrates what peering into Jupiter’s Great Red Spot might look like.
The incredible illustration above is drawn from direct data, and showcases the massive lightning storms inside of Jupiter’s swirling clouds.
Juno is a NASA spacecraft that has been exploring the biggest planet in our solar system for the last several years. Our fascination with this giant gas planet is only stoked further with gorgeous, swirling images of Jupiter’s stormy surface, and this collection taken by Juno are truly a sight to behold. To wrap your head around the scale of these storms is difficult, considering Jupiter is 300 times more massive than Earth. Indeed, the giant swirls resemble paintings or even milk being poured into an enormous cup of coffee. Juno took five years to travel the 1.74 billion (!!) miles to Jupiter, and will remain in orbit for at least another year, providing more of these gorgeous images of our largest planet. Via Twisted Sifter:
This enhanced-color image of Jupiter’s bands of light and dark clouds was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Three of the white oval storms known as the “String of Pearls” are visible near the top of the image. Each of the alternating light and dark atmospheric bands in this image is wider than Earth, and each rages around Jupiter at hundreds of miles (kilometers) per hour. The lighter areas are regions where gas is rising, and the darker bands are regions where gas is sinking. Juno acquired the image on May 19, 2017, at 11:30 a.m. PST (2:30 p.m. EST) from an altitude of about 20,800 miles (33,400 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops.This series of enhanced-color images shows Jupiter up close and personal, as NASA’s Juno spacecraft performed its eighth flyby of the gas giant planet. The images were obtained by JunoCam.This enhanced color view of Jupiter’s cloud tops was processed by citizen scientist Bjorn Jonsson using data from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The image highlights a massive counterclockwise rotating storm that appears as a white oval in the gas giant’s southern hemisphere. Juno acquired this image on Feb. 2, 2017, at 6:13 a.m. PDT (9:13 a.m. EDT), as the spacecraft performed a close flyby of Jupiter. When the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers) from the planet.This image, taken by the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft, highlights a feature on Jupiter where multiple atmospheric conditions appear to collide. This publicly selected target is called “STB Spectre.” The ghostly bluish streak across the right half of the image is a long-lived storm, one of the few structures perceptible in these whitened latitudes where the south temperate belt of Jupiter would normally be. The egg-shaped spot on the lower left is where incoming small dark spots make a hairpin turn.This image of Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot was created by citizen scientist Björn Jónsson using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. 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. The tumultuous atmospheric zones in and around the Great Red Spot are clearly visible.A dynamic storm at the southern edge of Jupiter’s northern polar region dominates this Jovian cloudscape, courtesy of NASA’s Juno spacecraft. This storm is a long-lived anticyclonic oval named North North Temperate Little Red Spot 1 (NN-LRS-1); it has been tracked at least since 1993, and may be older still. 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. It 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.The Juno spacecraft captured this image when the spacecraft was only 11,747 miles (18,906 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds — that’s roughly as far as the distance between New York City and Perth, Australia. The color-enhanced image, which captures a cloud system in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere, was taken on Oct. 24, 2017 at 10:24 a.m. PDT (1:24 p.m. EDT) when Juno was at a latitude of 57.57 degrees (nearly three-fifths of the way from Jupiter’s equator to its north pole) and performing its ninth close flyby of the gas giant planet.This striking Jovian vista was created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The tumultuous Great Red Spot is fading from Juno’s view while the dynamic bands of the southern region of Jupiter come into focus. North is to the left of the image, and south is on the right.This color-enhanced image of a massive, raging storm in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its ninth close flyby of the gas giant planet. The image was taken on Oct. 24, 2017 at 10:32 a.m. PDT (1:32 p.m. EDT). At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 6,281 miles (10,108 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of Jupiter at a latitude of 41.84 degrees. The spatial scale in this image is 4.2 miles/pixel (6.7 kilometers/pixel).
Juno is Nasa’s spacecraft that spent five years traveling to Jupiter, to study our solar system’s biggest planet in detail. Part of it’s mission was to photograph the gas giant, and now those publicly available photos have been put in motion by Sean Doran, giving you a real life up-close look at Jupiter in all it’s splendor. We have a beautiful neighbor in our solar system… Via Colossal:
A new photo by Juno Cam, taken February 2017, shows a swirl of colorful storms, 9,000 feet above the Jovian planet. Jupiter’s size is breathtaking, with many of the visible storms being as large as Earth itself. Check out this quick size comparison we drew up to get a sense of the planet’s epic scale.
Raw images from Juno Cam are available to the public here:
Even through NASA’s budget cuts and scalebacks, the Mars Science Laboratory has been a work in progress for years, culminating in a launch Saturday out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. After a 354 million mile cruise through space, the MSL will land on Mars, and begin to explore the possibility of life having existed on Mars, and whether it could still exist today.
NASA’s six-wheeled, one-armed wonder, Curiosity, will reach Mars next summer and use its jackhammer drill, rock-zapping laser machine and other devices to search for evidence that Earth’s next-door neighbor might once have been home to the teeniest forms of life.
More than 13,000 invited guests jammed the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday morning to witness NASA’s first launch to Mars in four years, and the first flight of a Martian rover in eight years.
Mars fever gripped the crowd.
NASA astrobiologist Pan Conrad, whose carbon compound-seeking instrument is on the rover, wore a bright blue, short-sleeve blouse emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words, “Next stop Mars!” She jumped, cheered and snapped pictures as the Atlas V rocket blasted off. So did Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist in charge of Curiosity’s laser blaster, called ChemCam.
Surrounded by 50 U.S. and French members of his team, Wiens shouted “Go, Go, Go!” as the rocket soared into a cloudy sky. “It was beautiful,” he later observed, just as NASA declared the launch a full success.
Launched Saturday, Curiosity will fly for 8 months, at thousands of miles an hour.
Mars Science Laboratories successful launch.
The 1-ton Curiosity – 10 feet tall, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall at its mast – is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample Martian soil and rocks, and with unprecedented skill, analyze them right on the spot.
It’s as big as a car. But NASA’s Mars exploration program director calls it “the monster truck of Mars.”
Wheels from past vehicle Sojourner, Spirit/Opportunity, and the much larger Curiosity.
“It’s an enormous mission. It’s equivalent of three missions, frankly, and quite an undertaking,” said the ecstatic program director, Doug McCuistion. “Science fiction is now science fact. We’re flying to Mars. We’ll get it on the ground and see what we find.”
Workers applying MSL decals on the rocket.
The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether cold, dry, barren Mars might have been hospitable for microbial life once upon a time – or might even still be conducive to life now. No actual life detectors are on board; rather, the instruments will hunt for organic compounds.
Curiosity’s 7-foot arm has a jackhammer on the end to drill into the Martian red rock, and the 7-foot mast on the rover is topped with high-definition and laser cameras.
With Mars the ultimate goal for astronauts, NASA will use Curiosity to measure radiation at the red planet. The rover also has a weather station on board that will provide temperature, wind and humidity readings; a computer software app with daily weather updates is planned.
No previous Martian rover has been so sophisticated.
The world has launched more than three dozen missions to the ever-alluring Mars, which is more like Earth than the other solar-system planets. Yet fewer than half those quests have succeeded.
Just two weeks ago, a Russian spacecraft ended up stuck in orbit around Earth, rather than en route to the Martian moon Phobos.
“Mars really is the Bermuda Triangle of the solar system,” said NASA’s Colleen Hartman, assistant associate administrator for science. “It’s the death planet, and the United States of America is the only nation in the world that has ever landed and driven robotic explorers on the surface of Mars, and now we’re set to do it again.”
Curiosity’s arrival next August will be particularly hair-raising.
In a spacecraft first, the rover will be lowered onto the Martian surface via a jet pack and tether system similar to the sky cranes used to lower heavy equipment into remote areas on Earth.
Too heavy for a conventional landing, Curiosity must be lowered from its rocket-powered friend.
Curiosity is too heavy to use air bags like its much smaller predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, did in 2004. Besides, this new way should provide for a more accurate landing.
Never-before-tried sky crane landing for Curiosity.
Astronauts will need to make similarly precise landings on Mars one day.
Curiosity will spend a minimum of two years roaming around Gale Crater, chosen from among more than 50 potential landing sites because it’s so rich in minerals. Scientists said if there is any place on Mars that might have been ripe for life, it may well be there.
Hopeful landing place for Curiosity in Mars' Gale Crater
The rover should go farther and work harder than any previous Mars explorer because of its power source: 10.6 pounds of radioactive plutonium. The nuclear generator was encased in several protective layers in case of a launch accident. The “Plutonium battery” is supposed to work for a minimum of 14 years, possibly up to 18 or 20.
NASA expects to put at least 12 miles on the odometer, once the rover sets down on the Martian surface.
Rendering of Curiosity exploring Mars.
McCuistion anticipates being blown away by the never-before-seen vistas. “Those first images are going to just be stunning, I believe. It will be like sitting in the bottom of the Grand Canyon,” he said at a post-launch news conference.
This is the third astronomical mission to be launched from Cape Canaveral by NASA since the retirement of the venerable space shuttle fleet this summer. The Juno probe is en route to Jupiter, and twin spacecraft named Grail will arrive at Earth’s moon on New Year’s Eve and Day.
Tracks from Spirit, in 2004. On. Another. Planet. (!!)
Unlike Juno and Grail, Curiosity suffered development programs and came in two years late and nearly $1 billion over budget. Scientists involved in the project noted Saturday that the money is being spent on Earth, not Mars, and the mission is costing every American about the price of a movie.
“I’ll leave you to judge for yourself whether or not that’s a movie you’d like to see,” said California Institute of Technology’s John Grotzinger, the project scientist. “I know that’s one I would.”
The incredible illustration above is drawn from direct data, and showcases the massive lightning storms inside of Jupiter’s swirling clouds.
