Nasa’s Juno spacecraft obtains spectacular footage of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot
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For hundreds of years astronomers have been perplexed by the massive red storm that can be seen on Jupiter’s surface. The Juno spacecraft acquired some spectacular footage of the biggest planet in our solar system. The red storm on the planet’s surface is 1.3 times the width of Earth and has been furiously churning for over 300 years.
The Juno spacecraft was launched in August 2011 at NASA’s Cape Canaveral, Florida, equipped with imaging devices and a variety of sensors. The raw images retrieved by Juno, were processed by scientists at NASA, to gain further insights into the behaviour of the red spot and the atmosphere of Jupiter in general. The raw images and the processed images can be viewed at the following link:
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing.
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To gain the best possible images of Jupiter’s surface the Juno probe is required to be within close proximity to the planet, On the 10th of June, 2017, Juno reached perijove (the point at which an orbit is closest to the surface of a planet) at 6:55 p.m. PDT. At this point Juno was approximately 3500km from the surface of Jupiter – 11 minutes later Juno had the optimal vantage point to collect the required data and images, from the mysterious red spot. Junocam and all of the instruments on board the spacecraft were fully operational to collect the important information. The next opportunity for a close flyby of Jupiter’s surface will occur on the 1st of September, later this year (NASA, 2017).
NASA has highlighted that early analyses of the collected data indicates that the largest planet in our solar solar system has a complex and turbulent atmosphere:
Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission portray the largest planet in our solar system as a turbulent world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora, and huge polar cyclones. (NASA, 2017)
Such insights will provide invaluable information related to the magnetosphere of Jupiter, the composition of its atmosphere and the levels of radiation on the planet’s surface.
The images from Jupiter’s surface, acquired by the Juno spacecraft, will be used in conjunction with images gained from Voyager, Galileo, New Horizons and Hubble, to give a fuller understanding of the planet’s composition. These insights will help scientists shed light on the unique atmospheric constitution of Jupiter, that has led to the generation of the massive red storm on its surface,
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