The Juno spacecraft, which NASA launched into space on August 6, 2011 and commissioned to explore Jupiter, entered the orbit of the giant planet in 2016. Juno continues to send high-quality photos from Jupiter ever since. The last photo Juno sent the other day revealed the huge storms on Jupiter.
Completing its 43rd flyby mission to Jupiter, Juno captured impressive images of the planet’s North Pole during this mission. Those images shared by NASA were home to details that offered important information about Jupiter’s atmosphere. The new Jupiter images were as follows:
Here is Jupiter’s North Pole:
- Click to view in full size.
Each vortex-like structure in the photo we see above was the same storm that was taking place in the planet’s atmosphere. When we look at the photograph, each of these storms, whose size we cannot estimate exactly, actually went up to 50 kilometers high and covered an area of hundreds of kilometers.
- A cropped area from the photo above.
According to the statement shared by NASA, understanding how these storms form will also allow us to understand the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that make up Jupiter’s atmosphere and other atmospheric features of the planet. The colors and sizes of Jupiter storms are among the areas that the scientific world continues to study intensively.