Jovian ‘Twilight Zone’

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt

This image captures the swirling cloud formations around the south pole of Jupiter, looking up toward the equatorial region.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took the color-enhanced image during its eleventh close flyby of the gas giant planet on Feb. 7 at 7:11 a.m. PST (10:11 a.m. EST). At the time, the spacecraft was 74,896 miles (120,533 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds at 84.9 degrees south latitude.

Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager. This image was created by reprocessing raw JunoCam data using trajectory and pointing data from the spacecraft. This image is one in a series of images taken in an experiment to capture the best results for illuminated parts of Jupiter's polar region.

Source / Image Courtesy

 

This is a composite shot of Jupiter's south pole constructed using photos taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

 

Jupiter’s “southern lights” (also known as auroras) are on display in this animation of false-color maps from NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

Auroras result when energetic electrons from the magnetosphere crash into the molecular hydrogen in the Jovian upper atmosphere.

 

NASA South Pole of Jupiter: is on display in an image created by a scientist.

The instrument JunoCam board the spacecraft lace images of the giant Jupiter each time Juno makes a close flyby every 53 days.

This new image, created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset, uses colors to highlight contrasting bands in the improved Jupiter atmosphere. The image also shows how the planet's atmosphere is full of small, round, swirling storms not very different from the famous Great Red Spot of Jupiter.

JunoCam collects the RAW image on December 11, 2016, at 9:44 pm PST 24:44 EST, from an altitude of about 32,400 miles 52,200 kilometers above the planet's top clouds.

The junction path across the planet takes the probe over Jupiter's poles, which were not previously photographed or not observed in detail. The weather patterns at the poles are different from anything seen on any of the giant gaseous planets in our solar system.

 

NASA's Juno spacecraft executed its first of 36 orbital flybys of Jupiter on August 27 and the agency has released a few images from the transit

. One of the most striking ones shows Jupiter's southern aurora and it was captured using an infrared camera on board the spacecraft.