Jupiter's photo that looks like a work of art

The image was reconstructed from the raw data sent by the space probe. It shows several bright white "emergent" clouds as well as an anticyclonic storm, called a white oval.

The Juno spacecraft, launched in August 2011 and equipped with advanced equipment to better know the giant of our solar system, Jupiter, a planet with a volume a thousand times larger than the Earth, took a picture that delighted astronomers and fans around the world.

The photo was taken on Oct. 29 as Juno flew its 16th flight near Jupiter, about 7,000 kilometers (4,400 miles) from the summit of the planet's clouds, at a latitude of about 40 degrees north , dazzled the engineers. from the space agency for its beauty.

According to a statement by the US Space Agency, this image shows "a multitude of beautiful swirling clouds in the dynamic temperate-north Jupiter belt." On the scene appear several bright "emerging" white clouds, as well an anticyclonic storm, called a white oval.

Is this exactly what an interplanetary traveler could see if he was looking through a window of his ship? NASA engineers responsible for JunoCam, a camera that captures visible light, have shed light. The data they receive from the ship is published so that everyone can intervene and play with them. The photograph published today by NASA has been reconstructed and slightly interposed to highlight the colors of citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran. (Read: The year of the conquest of Jupiter).

"The true color images are much lighter and more pastel and the cloud characteristics are not so delimited, but the largest planet in the solar system still has a serene beauty that hides the winds and chaotic storms that lie beneath", explained Jason Daley in Smithsonian magazine.