A swirling storm somersaults through Jupiter’s South Equatorial Belt in this view taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. This feature -- not to be confused with the planet’s iconic Great Red Spot -- is escorted by several smaller, reddish vortices above and to the left.
This natural color view offers an approximation of what Jupiter would look like to human eyes from Juno’s vantage point near the time of closest approach in its orbit. Jupiter’s stunning appearance is due to its atmosphere of colorful cloud bands and spots. The vivid red and orange hues are created by chemicals of uncertain composition called "chromophores."
The image was taken at 10:28 p.m. PDT on July 15, 2018 (1:28 a.m. EDT on July 16), as the spacecraft performed its 14th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,900 miles (8,000 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a southern latitude of 36 degrees.
Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager.
JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam.
More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu.
Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Björn Jónsson
Last Updated: July 26, 2018
Editor: Tony Greicius
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