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Enormous cyclones rage on Jupiter’s south pole, in an image created by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles |
NASA’s ‘Juno’ spacecraft was launched in 2011 and entered Jupiter’s orbit in July 2016. Tasked with studying the gas giant, early data from Juno suggest that among other insights, scientists had underestimated the intensity of Jupiter’s ‘mammoth, lumpy’ magnetic field.
Juno is on a polar orbit around Jupiter, passing close to the surface every 53 days. Each time it makes a pass, it collects data using various instruments, including its ‘Junocam’ camera. It takes around one and a half days to send back 6MB of data.
Taken in Jovian orbit from a height of 32,000 miles, this image show huge earth-sized storms raging on Jupiter’s south pole. Each storm is made up of cyclones that measure 600 miles in diameter.
And we thought Seattle’s weather was bad…
Read more about the Juno mission at NASA.com
