NASA's Juno Spacecraft Captures Best Images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot
Posted on July 13, 2017
NASA has revealed the best images taken to date of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. They were taken during the Juno spacecraft's June 10th flyby of the massive planet. The spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the clouds of the storm. The JunoCam was used to obtain the imagery of Jupiter's iconic monster storm.
The above image is an enhanced-color image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot created by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft. The image below was created by was created by citizen scientist Kevin Gill with the data.
Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, says in the announcement, "For hundreds of years scientists have been observing, wondering and theorizing about Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm. It will take us some time to analyze all the data from not only JunoCam, but Juno's eight science instruments, to shed some new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot."
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is 1.3 times as wide as the Earth. It measured 10,159 miles (16,350 kilometers) in width on April 3, 201. It has been monitored since 1830 and is believed that have existed for over 350 years. In modern times, the Great Red Spot has appeared to be shrinking.
You can high-res versions of the images here on the NASA's JPL space images site.