Science and Exploration

Luminous Clouds On Jupiter

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
January 6, 2020
Filed under ,
Luminous Clouds On Jupiter
Jupiter
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

Jupiter’s clouds have a luminous beauty in this image taken by Juno’s JunoCam camera on its 20th close pass by Jupiter.
Enhanced colors give a vertical dimension to the clouds. Tiny bright white clouds are the highest, casting shadows on the next layer of clouds. Splashes of orange may be the color of the deepest clouds in this image, viewed through openings in the pastel layer.

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed this image, acquired on May 29, 2019 at 12:46 a.m. PDT (3:46 a.m. EDT). Juno was over 53 degrees south latitude, at an altitude of about 29,800 miles (48,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops, and details as small as 20 miles (32 kilometers) can be resolved.

JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at
https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing.

Larger image

Image credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Kevin M. Gill, © CC BY

SpaceRef co-founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.