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| Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Bjorn Jonsson |
The above view of Jupiter, taken by the
JunoCam imager of NASA’s Juno spacecraft, highlights Oval BA -- a massive storm
known as the Little Red Spot. Despite its unofficial name, the Little Red Spot
is about as wide as Earth. The storm reached its current size when three
smaller spots collided and merged in the year 2000. The Great Red Spot, which
is about twice as wide as the Little Red Spot, may have formed from the same
process centuries ago.
Juno acquired this image on Feb. 2,
2017, at 6:13 a.m. PDT (9:13 a.m. EDT), as the spacecraft performed a close
flyby of Jupiter. When the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 9,000
miles (14,500 kilometers) from the planet.
This enhanced color image was processed
by citizen scientist Bjorn Jonsson.
JunoCam's raw images are available for
the public to peruse and process into image products at:
www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam
More information about Juno is at:
http://www.nasa.gov/juno and
http://missionjuno.swri.edu
MORE ON JUNO:
Juno
launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit
around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars
low over the planet's cloud tops -- as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400
kilometers) During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud
cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's
origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for
the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in
San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science
Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the
spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.
More
information on the Juno mission is available at:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno
http://missionjuno.org
The
public can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
http://www.facebook.com/NASAJuno
http://www.twitter.com/NASAJuno
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