NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been hanging around Jupiter for a while now, sending back some of the most jaw-dropping photos that mankind has ever captured, but its latest snapshot might be its most impressive yet.
Woah man (Picture: Juno Mission/Nasa)NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back a mind-meltingly weird image of the swirling clouds over the gas giant – taken from just 8,000 miles up.
It looks like the inside of a lava lamp – and was taken on December 16 by the tiny armoured probe, which is flying closer to the giant planet than any previous spacecraft.
The Juno probe took five years to make the 1.7 billion mile journey to the solar system’s largest planet – and is now gathering data on the mysterious gas giant. Juno is studying the planet’s composition, gravity, magnetic field, and the source of its raging 384mph winds.
Jupiter completely fills the image, with only a hint of the terminator (where daylight fades to night) in the upper right corner, and no visible limb (the curved edge of the planet). The spatial scale in this image is 5.8 miles/pixel.
