Jupiter in pictures: nasa’s juno spacecraft captures stunning images

On March 28 the US space agency shared an image titled ‘Abstract Jupiter Atmosphere’. The surreal looking photograph, easily mistaken for an oil painting, shows Jupiter’s violent atmospheric

storms in calm and peaceful manner. NASA said: “Citizen scientist Rick Lundh created this abstract Jovian artwork using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. “The original

image captures a close-up view of numerous storms in the northern hemisphere of Jupiter. “To produce this artwork, Lundh selected a more contrasting part of one of Jupiter’s storms, then

cropped the image and applied an oil-painting filter.” Another JunoCam image processed in March, shows the gas giant bathed in an ethereal blue and green glow among the stars. Captured at

Jupiter’s south pole, the colour-enhanced photographed was taken on February 7, some 74,896 miles (120,533 kilometres) above Jupiter’s clouds. The stunning image was processed by citizen

scientist Gerald Eichstädt. NASA said: “To make features more visible in Jupiter’s terminator — the region where day meets night — the Juno team adjusted JunoCam so that it would perform

like a portrait photographer taking multiple photos at different exposures, hoping to capture one image with the intended light balance. “For JunoCam to collect enough light to reveal

features in Jupiter’s dark twilight zone, the much brighter illuminated day-side of Jupiter becomes overexposed with the higher exposure.” The Juno spacecraft blasted off from Earth on a

solitary 365 million mile (588 million km) track towards the gas giant in 2011. But it would take the spacecraft five years before it finally reached its destination in 2016. NASA said

Juno’s primary goal is to study the planet and expand out understanding of Jupiter’s formation and evolution. Jupiter, the fifth planet from the sun and the largest in our solar system, has

a volume of roughly 1,321 Earths. And despite being mostly made of swirling gases, the planet’s mass is about 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the system combined. If you would

like to try your hand at helping NASA in its effort to process JunoCam’s images, you can find the RAW image files here. NASA publically invited everyone to download the images, process them

and share them with the rest of the world. The space agency said: “The types of image processing we’d love to see range from simply cropping an image to highlighting a particular atmospheric

feature, as well as adding your own colour enhancements, creating collages and adding advanced colour reconstruction.”