Latest Photos: Jupiter ‘up close and personal’

Written by Sage Lazzaro on September 14, 2017. Posted in Current News

NASA‘s Juno spacecraft performed its eighth flyby of Jupiter and captured stunning images of the planet. The photos – captured on September 1 – show various points of interest on the giant gas planet in incredible detail.

The four-photo series begins with a head-on look at the planet before showing Jupiter tilted upward, revealing the planet’s stormy south pole.

The first photo offers a good look at the center of the planet, even showing a bit of the north and the aurorae on the north pole. The second shows the wide dark belts that contrast with lighter-hued zones, which are arranged at different latitudes and called ‘tropical regions.’ The interactions of these conflicting cloud and circulation patterns cause turbulence, storms, and wind speeds of 100 m/s.

In the third photo, more of the cyclones that live on the planet’s south side come into view. By the last, Jupiter’s south pole starts to show.  The spacecraft whizzed past the gas giant for a total of eight minutes between 6:03 PM and 6:11 PM EDT.

At the times the images were taken, Juno’s altitude ranged from 7,545 to 14,234 miles (12,143 to 22,908 kilometers) from the tops of the planet’s clouds. Last month, a stunning new image of Jupiter captured by NASA‘s Juno spacecraft 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 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.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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