Juno captures an elusive brown barge

A long brown oval known as the "brown barge" in the southern equatorial belt of Jupiter is captured in this enhanced color image of NASA's Juno probe.

The brown barges are cyclonic regions that are generally located in the northeastern equatorial belt of Jupiter, although they are also sometimes found in the southern equatorial belt. They can often be difficult to detect visually because their color melts in the dark environment. At other times, as with this image, the material of the dark belt recedes, creating a lighter colored background on which the brown barge is more visible. Brown barges usually dissipate after the entire cloud belt undergoes upheaval and reorganization. Juno gives us the first glimpses of the detailed structure in such a barge.

This image was taken at 6:26 pm PDT on September 6, 2018 (9:26 pm EDT) as the spacecraft made its 15th flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was 7,925 kilometers from the summit of the planet, above a southern latitude of about 22 degrees.

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the JunoCam imager from the spacecraft. The image was rotated 90 degrees to the right of the original image.

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Image: The Southern Hemisphere of Jupiter