NASA’s Juno spacecraft has revealed an accurate picture of the atmosphere Jupiter and the moons Callisto and Io. The newly released JunoCam image was taken less than a year ago, when the Juno-Jupiter probe completed its 38th close flyby of the largest planet in our solar system.
According to the “Space” website, the image shows the arc of Jupiter’s horizon and the undulating clouds of the planet, while also capturing the moons Io and Callisto, and the image was taken when Juno was regarding 8,700 miles (14,000 km) above the cloud tops. Jupiter, at 69 degrees latitude, was traveling at regarding 123,000 mph (198,000 km/h) relative to the planet, according to a NASA statement.
Scientist Gerald Eichstadt used raw JunoCam data to create the original version of this image, and NASA revealed that another scientist, Thomas Thomopoulos, then processed it, zooming in, and making color enhancements.
It should be noted that Juno recently made a flyby of the four main Galilean moons of Jupiter, the ice-covered ocean world Europa, and Juno also approached the fourth moon Ganymede in April 2021, providing images of Europa’s largest moon. of the solar system during these trips.
NASA provides raw images to JunoCam where they are available for the public to view and process, as two scientists did with a recently released Juno image of nearly a year’s worth of data.
