Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, has over 95 recognized moons. Io is one of the four Galilean moons, (the four largest), and the innermost to Jupiter.
It also happens to be the most volcanically active bodies in the entire solar system. With over 400 active volcanoes, Io is not the kind of place you want to spend a summer vacation.
Via NASA’s Galileo spacecraft
Amid the fiery chaos of Io, stands Steeple Mountain—a truly breathtaking peak rising nearly 20,000 feet from the moon’s surface. By comparison, the tallest peak on earth is 29,032 feet.
Shaped by Io’s intense tectonic forces, its jagged slopes are vibrant yellow and green from sulfur deposits, creating a surreal alien landscape.
The data used to create this animation was recorded during close flybys of the moon in December 2023 and February 2024 by JunoCam.
Steeple Mountain is an amazing mix of beauty in these harsh environs, sitting pretty amidst the constant lava flows and tremors.
No one has hiked its peaks, making it more untouched and unknown. The delicate spires on top are thought to be formed by tectonic activity, not volcanic.
Screenshot
For now, it’s still one of the coolest sights the solar system has to offer.
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.
We are big fans of solid, tactile objects to have on your desk, to add some art, or interest, or just something to touch while you might be staring at a screen all day. Deskspace takes that concept to the next level, with their faithful and beautiful planet series. Proportional and sourced from visually relatable gemstones, these lovingly crafted spheres put the entire solar system in your fingertips, giving you a beautiful and mind-expanding distraction. A perfect gift for the science lover in your life.
We love the fact that the planets are sourced from gems that resemble the surface of the planets themselves. And that they included good ‘ol Pluto!
Each set comes with images and information about the real planets. Learn more on the Deskspace website.
Pluto is included in the series, made of Heliotrope.
Uranus is made from the fascinating stone Amazonite.
Mercury’s surface is made from iridescent Labradorite.
Saturn’s glow comes from orange Calcite.
The textured, fluid appearance of Jupiter is made out of Tiger’s Eye.
The deep blue of Neptune is made from Synthetic Cat’s Eye, which is spun glass with fibers in it.
Our home, Earth, is made from the blue and white Sodalite.
Mars’ red surface is made from Mahogany Obsidian.
Venus is made from the light colored stone Nephrite.
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:
NASA has an eye for the artistic, and these beautifully concepted and illustrated posters are a great example of creativity + space travel.
Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future. Via JPL:
What’s cooler than a vacation to Europe? A probe sent to Europa, one of Jupiter’s 60+ moons, and possibly a celestial body in our solar system that could harbor life.
Scientists have for years wondered about the strange, complex surface textures of this moon.
Slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and probably has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and streaks, while craters are relatively infrequent. The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably serve as an abode for extraterrestrial life.This hypothesis proposes that heat energy from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives geological activity similar to plate tectonics.
Just in the last few months, have determined that, indeed, the surface is made up of ice that shows relatively recent activity from underneath. The idea from many in the space community is to send an advanced probe to this moon, and either drill or melt through the 3-kilometer-thick surface to the water oceans below.
The task is going to be monumental to complete, and in the age of budget-slashing, NASA may not get the funding it needs to get this off the drawing board. Who knows what a probe would discover, if it could ever complete its mission. We do know that strange, primitive life exists at the bottom of our own oceans, where no sunlight ever reaches. Thermal vents near the earth’s mantle pump out heat that make this life possible.
In 2006, Robert T. Pappalardo, an assistant professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder said,
We’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to understand if Mars was once a habitable environment. Europa today, probably, is a habitable environment. We need to confirm this … but Europa, potentially, has all the ingredients for life … and not just four billion years ago … but today.
We can be sure that if a scientific probe beamed back images of strange alien life swimming under the icy shell of Europa, our existence would never be the same. Let’s go!
The incredible illustration above is drawn from direct data, and showcases the massive lightning storms inside of Jupiter’s swirling clouds.
