Key Highlights
- The US space agency, NASA’s Juno mission, clicked massive storms on the surface of Jupiter.
- While the enormous storms look enchanting in the picture, they can be quite powerful and massive, with a height of 50 kilometers and spread hundreds of miles across the planet.
The space agency of the United States, NASA’s Juno mission, has completed its 43rd close flyby of the giant planet of our solar system, Jupiter. It has delivered a phenomenal picture of the surface in the process.
The captured shot features magnetic vortices or hurricane-like spiral wind patterns forming near Jupiter’s north pole. This year, the Juno mission flew past close to Jupiter on July 5. It captured the striking photo using its JunoCam instrument.
While the vast storms look enchanting in the picture, they can be quite powerful and massive, with a height of 50 kilometers and spread hundreds of miles across the planet. They also hold important information about the atmosphere of Jupiter. By studying their formation, scientists can get an insight into the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create other atmospheric features of Jupiter.
Scientists will be analyzing the various shapes, colors, and sizes of the vortices seen on Jupiter. The variation in color and shape is seen in the cyclones that form on Earth. For example, cyclones that spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anticyclones which behave the other way differ in color and shape.
NASA has launched a citizen science project called Jovian Vortex Hunter which allows people to locate vortices in the picture and help the space agency categorize them. The Juno spacecraft of NASA left for its five-year journey on August 5, 2011, and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
In the Juno mission, Juno collected a trove of data during its initial 35 orbits and captured breathtaking views of Jupiter and its satellites. Now, it is on its extended mission and will continue to investigate Jupiter through September 2025 or until the end of its life.
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