Jupiter’s vociferous weather systems snapped on a Juno fly-by reveal a stunning cosmic oil painting.
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By Jackson Ryan, CNET
Although originally slated to crash into Jupiter this month, Juno, NASA's Jovian explorer, has been given a three-year extension to gather all of NASAs planned scientific measurements, NASA announced earlier this month.
If it keeps producing images like this, showcasing Jupiter's writhing, stormy face, I really hope they never crash the Absolute Unit.
The
picture was snapped on May 23 as Juno swung past the planet for a 13th
time, only 9,600 miles from its "surface", the tangle of tumultuous
clouds that mark its exterior. The bright white hues represent clouds
that are likely made of a mix of ammonia and water, while the darker
blue-green spirals represent cloud material "deeper in Jupiter's
atmosphere."
The
image was color-enhanced by two citizen scientists, Gerald Eichstädt
and Seán Doran, to produce the image above. The rippling mess of storms
marks Jupiter's face like a stunning oil painting, a Jovian Starry Night with billowing whites curling in on each other, like the folds of a human brain.
NASA
draws attention to the "bright oval" in the bottom portion of the
image, explaining how JunoCam -- the imager on the spacecraft -- reveals
"fine-scale structure within this weather system, including additional
structures within it."
It's not the first time that Jupiter's menace has been caught and colorized either, but this Earth-like image snapped back in March, shows a side of the gas giant that isn't all about swirling clouds and red spots.
All of Juno's images taken with the JunoCam imager are available to marvel at and process at the Juno Mission homepage.
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