It may be a churning ball of gases that would swallow anything that tried to land there but viewed from afar Jupiter looks like a stunning piece of art. Newly released photos captures the enormous planet in all its glory.
Weighing in at more than two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, Jupiter really is the big dog in our neighborhood of the universe.
NASA’s Juno space probe is orbiting the behemoth in a bid to learn more about the gas giant and its turbulent atmosphere. The craft has beamed back new, breathtaking images showing the extraordinary, churning texture – caused by elaborate atmospheric jets – in the planet’s northern mid-latitude region.
The exceptionally detailed images expose a complex topography in Jupiter’s cloud tops. Relatively small and bright “pop-up” clouds can even be seen rising above the other features. They can be seen standing out at the tops and edges of the swirling patterns, while the darker areas nearby reveal greater depth.
The images were snapped by Juno on April 10 and, after being processed by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill, NASA released one example in recent days. Juno’s onboard imaging technology recorded the data while traveling some 5,375 miles (8,650 kilometers) over the clouds at a latitude of about 50 degrees North. The probe was traveling about 127,000 mph (204,000 kilometers per hour) when it snapped the stunning scene.
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