'The tapestry of vibrant clouds': Nasa's Juno captures Jupiter's raging storms in stunning new photo
The image was taken on 16 December 2017 during Juno's 10th close flyby of the planet.
Nasa has captured Jupiter's ghostly features in another breathtaking shot. The space agency, on 13 January 2018, shared an incredible cosmic photo showcasing the gas giant and its cloud belts in unprecedented detail.
The image, just like the previous one from Nasa, shows the tumultuous nature of cloud storms swirling over Jupiter. However, on this occasion, instead of an up-close look, Nasa went for a stunning wide-angle shot, covering the southern hemisphere of the planet like never before.
Jupiter looks to have cut in half in this beautiful image. The view encompasses its cloud belts in different hues, with a dark region, dubbed South Temperate Belt, on the extreme left and slithering white clouds intersecting it.
The ghostly white clouds are a result of a clockwise moving cyclone. This, as the agency notes, is the largest feature in Jupiter's low latitudes.
Nasa describes the whole thing as "a tapestry of vibrant cloud bands and storms".
The image was taken on 16 December 2017, during Juno's 10th close flyby of the planet. The spacecraft, which has been orbiting the gas-giant since 2016, was 13,604 kilometres above the clouds of the planet when the agency used its JunoCam imager to capture the breathtaking shot.
However, it is worth noting that this is not how the planet or its cloud belts appear in real. The image is a colour-enhanced version of the raw photo, which has been processed by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill. Many other colour-enhanced JunoCam images are available for online access.
As Juno continues to explore Jupiter's raging atmosphere and its secrets, viewers can access the images it captures during occasional close flybys.
