NASA has released a spectacular new image of Jupiter that shows “powerful storms” close to the planet’s north pole.
Using unprocessed image data from the JunoCam of the American space agency NASA, a citizen scientist produced the enhanced colour and contrast view of the storms.
On July 5, 2022, NASA conducted its 43rd flyby of Jupiter as part of its effort to study the planet.
According to a statement released by NASA on July 26, “JunoCam equipment captured this spectacular glimpse of vortices — hurricane-like spiral wind patterns —near the planet’s north pole.”
These powerful storms can be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in height and hundreds of miles across. Figuring out how they form is key to understanding Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create the planet’s other atmospheric features.
A NASA citizen science project, Jovian Vortex Hunter, seeks help from volunteer members of the public to spot and help categorize vortices and other atmospheric phenomena visible in JunoCam photos of Jupiter. As of July 2022, 2,404 volunteers had made 376,725 classifications using the Jovian Vortex Hunter project web site.
Powerful Storms near Jupiter – Check the images
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.
More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.
