See tumultuous tempests in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere in this portrait taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
Like our home planet, Jupiter has cyclones and anticyclones, along with fast-moving jet streams that circle its globe. This image captures a jet stream, called Jet N6, located on the far right of the image. It is next to an anticyclonic white oval that is the brighter circular feature in the top right corner. The North North Little Red Spot is also visible in this view.
The image was taken at 10 p.m. PDT on July 15, 2018 (1 a.m. EDT on July 16), as the spacecraft performed its 14th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 10,600 miles (17,000 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, above a latitude of 59 degrees.
Citizen scientists Brian Swift and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. The image has been rotated clockwise so that north is to the right. The stars were artfully added to the background for effect.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam.
More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu.
Credits: Enhanced Image by Brian Swift and Sean Doran (CC BY-NC-SA) based on images provided Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS