The image is an “enhanced-color” mosaic comprised of multiple, sunlit scans. The massive storms it revealed surprised Juno mission scientists.
“We’re puzzled as to how they could be formed, how stable the configuration is, and why Jupiter’s north pole doesn’t look like the south pole,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator. “We’re questioning whether this is a dynamic system, and are we seeing just one stage, and over the next year, we’re going to watch it disappear, or is this a stable configuration and these storms are circulating around one another?”
Juno’s orbit is such that it spends most of its time farther away from the planet than scientists would like. But every 53 days, the satellite gets a close-up and collects 2 hours-worth of data with eight instruments. The end result is a file size that takes 36 hours to download.
“Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,” said Bolton.
And there’s more weather research coming in July.
“On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system,” Bolton added, “one that every school kid knows — Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.”
It’s a great time for NASA satellites. From the high-resolution pictures of Earth from DSCOVR to Juno’s art-like composites of Jupiter, we’re seeing our solar system in ways we never have before.
