Juno ship NASA captures beautiful swirling cloud formations on Jupiter

NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this magnificent image of Jupiter during its 18th flight over the planet. This new perspective shows dramatic circular cloud formations that revolve around a jet stream called Jet N6. This place is an example of a region of high pressure in the atmosphere that is thought to be a storm and could continue to rage for hundreds of years.

The image was not created by a professional astronomer, but by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill, who used data from the artist's JunoCam imager to create this new vision of the planet. JunoCam's raw images are made available to the public, who visualize them and transform them into images on the JunoCam website. You can create Jupiter images of your choice.

The Juno spacecraft was launched in August 2011 aboard an Atlas V 551 rocket, taking two years to go through the solar system before performing a near-ground flyby in October 2013. It used the gravity of the Earth to launch a sling towards Jupiter at high speed, before arriving on the planet in July 2016. It was difficult to get a craft to destination, but to put it in orbit was even more, because he had to perform a maneuver called Inserting Jupiter Orbit in which he launched his main engine for about 30 minutes to slow it down. enough to enter the orbit of the planet.

The maneuver was successful and the aircraft made its first flight around the world in August 2016. Since then, it has collected data on gravity and magnetic fields from Jupiter to learn more about the internal structure of the planet. . Jupiter is still unknown because clouds and huge storms in the atmosphere block the view on the surface. Juno uses observations of the atmosphere and the magnetosphere to gather data on whether the planet has a strong nucleus and how. it generates its large magnetic field.

The JunoCam is only one of the nine instruments on board the Juno craft, although it is unusual in that its main purpose is to collect images for the purpose. educational and public awareness rather than for scientific purposes. Thanks to this measure, it has been a great success, producing a series of breathtaking images like the one above, which have captivated the imagination of space lovers around the world.