NASA’s Juno spacecraft snaps stunning photo of storm swirling on Jupiter

The beautiful image has been featured as NASA’s Image of the Day, and shows swirling clouds on the surface of Jupiter

    At first glance at this photo you’d be forgiven for mistaking it as a surrealist painting.

    But the photo is very much real, and was snapped by NASA ’s Juno spacecraft back in 2018.

    The beautiful image has been featured as NASA’s Image of the Day, and shows swirling clouds on the surface of Jupiter .

    NASA explained: “A multitude of swirling clouds in Jupiter's dynamic North North Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft.

    “Appearing in the scene are several bright-white “pop-up” clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, known as a white oval.”

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    The photo was taken at 16:58 EDT on October 29, 2018, during Juno’s 16th close flyby of Jupiter.

    
While the photo looks like it was snapped close up, Juno was actually around 4,400 miles from Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of approximately 40 degrees north.

    Juno has been orbiting Jupiter since July 2016, having completed a five year journey to the enormous planet.

    The spacecraft is tasked with studying Jupiter’s giant gravitational and magnetic fields and exploring the swirling clouds that form Jupiter’s atmosphere.

    The spacecraft will also reveal what Jupiter is made of – and how much of it is water. 

    Sourse: www.mirror.co.uk

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