Our Universe never ceases to amaze us. No matter what you are looking at, the moon, a shooting star, a small asteroid, a planet within our solar system, a solar system within our galaxy etc.., the look will always be stunning.
Continuing on that list of stunning space imagery, it is now NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has come up with a stunning image of the gaseous Jupiter clouds. Juno has captured swirling clouds in the region of the giant planet’s northern hemisphere known as “Jet N4.”
According to NASA, citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created this enhanced-color image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. The raw image was taken on Sept. 11, 2019 at 8:31 p.m. PDT (11:31 p.m. EDT), as Juno performed its 22nd close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 7,540 miles (12,140 kilometers) from the cloud tops at a latitude of 45 degrees.
Jupiter spins once every 10 hours, and this fast rotation creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones that stretch across the face of the planet. More than a dozen prevailing winds sweep over Jupiter, some reaching more than 300 miles per hour (480 kilometers per hour) at the equator.
