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Colors on the Wind

Oct. 10, 2019
In this view of Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft captures swirling clouds in the region of the giant planet's northern hemisphere known as Jet N4.

In this view of Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft captures swirling clouds in the region of the giant planet's northern hemisphere known as "Jet N4."

Jupiter spins once every 10 hours, and this fast rotation creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones that stretch across the face of the planet. More than a dozen prevailing winds sweep over Jupiter, some reaching more than 300 miles per hour (480 kilometers per hour) at the equator.

Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created this enhanced-color image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. The raw image was taken on Sept. 11, 2019 at 8:31 p.m. PDT (11:31 p.m. EDT), as Juno performed its 22nd close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 7,540 miles (12,140 kilometers) from the cloud tops at a latitude of 45 degrees.

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 Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu.

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