This enhanced color view of Jupiter’s south pole was created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset using data from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Oval storms dot the cloudscape. Approaching the pole, the organized turbulence of Jupiter’s belts and zones transitions into clusters of unorganized filamentary structures, streams of air that resemble giant tangled strings.
The image was taken on Dec. 11, 2016 at 9:44 a.m. PST (12:44 p.m. EST), from an altitude of about 32,400 miles (52,200 kilometers) above the planet’s beautiful cloud tops.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at:
www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam
More information about Juno is at:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gabriel Fiset