NASA’s Juno spacecraft observed the complex colors and structure of Jupiter’s clouds as it completed its 43rd close flyby of the giant planet on July 5, 2022.
Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created
these two images using raw data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the
spacecraft. At the time the raw image was taken, Juno was about 3,300 miles
(5,300 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 50
degrees. North is up. At that moment, the spacecraft was traveling at about
130,000 mph (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet.
The first image (left) was processed to
portray the approximate colors that the human eye would see from Juno’s vantage
point. The second image (right) comes from the same raw data, but in this case
Jónsson digitally processed it to increase both the color saturation and
contrast to sharpen small-scale features and to reduce compression artifacts
and noise that typically appear in raw images. This clearly reveals some of the
most intriguing aspects of Jupiter’s atmosphere, including color variation that
results from differing chemical composition, the three-dimensional nature of
Jupiter’s swirling vortices, and the small, bright “pop-up” clouds that form in
the higher parts of the atmosphere.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for
the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science
can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Björn Jónsson © CC NC SA
Source: NASA’s
Juno Mission Reveals Jupiter’s Complex Colors – Scents of Science
(myfusimotors.com)
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