NASA recently uploaded the most detailed and exceptional images of Jupiter ever taken, saying these closest-ever images of Jupiter are “like nothing we have seen before.”
The Juno spacecraft, which entered Jupiter’s orbit in July after a five-year trek across the solar system, captured all these images. Juno got closer to Jupiter than any other spacecraft in history and took exclusive images of the planet from this historic 6-hour flyby.
NASA took 1.5 days to download these images. The images show previously unseen storm systems and weather activity, as well as Jupiter’s north pole.
The principal investigator of the Juno mission, Scott Bolton, said, “the first glimpse of Jupiter’s north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before.”
“It’s bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms.”
An infrared device, the Italian Space Agency’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), helped the Juno team study Jupiter’s polar regions in infrared wavelengths.
Bolton added, “There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to – this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter. We’re seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features.”
