NASA’s Juno spacecraft has taken up-close images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot for the first time, revealing awe-inspiring scenes of the enormous roiling tempest and vein-like cloud stripes.
The images were taken on Monday, July 10, while the spacecraft hovered about 9,000 kilometres above Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, and they were processed on Wednesday. Juno scientist Scott Bolton from the Southwest Research Institute in Texas lauded the photos: “For centuries, researchers have examined, debated, and formed theories about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, and we now have the best pictures ever captured of this iconic storm.”
The Great Red Spot remains Jupiter’s most famous landmark, matching Saturn’s rings as one of the solar system’s most compelling wonders.
The photos were handled by so-called citizen-scientists, a trendy term for laypeople, invited to work with the raw images and pull out as much detail and significance as possible.
Jason Major, a JunoCam citizen scientist and graphic designer, said: “It’s thrilling when new raw images of Jupiter arrive. Even more exciting is turning those raw frames into something the public can really enjoy. That is my goal.” He says the work mixes careful science with clear storytelling, turning data into a story that sparks curiosity for many people. Besides the surprise at color and detail, Major imagines viewers seeing scale and motion imagining the huge storm’s winds moving over the cloud bands and the soft glow of aurora-like colors in the upper atmosphere. For him, each image starts a conversation: it invites students to ask about how the atmosphere works, its chemistry, and how we observe it, while giving amateur astronomers a way to help through citizen science. He often compares the process to photojournalism, where one shot can raise many science questions at once and prompt talks about methods, data-processing choices, and what we can and cannot interpret. Practically, Major works with editors and teachers to write captions and extra materials that explain wavelength choices, false-color techniques, and how those choices reveal hidden features in Jupiter’s cloud tops. This teamwork makes the visuals both scientifically solid and easy to understand, helping people feel a connection to a world that is far away but alive.
The raw images are taken in red, green, blue and infrared, meaning that different wavelengths can be accented in the image, highlighting certain features or patterns.
The huge circular storm on Jupiter is a third as big again as planet Earth, and remains something of an enigma to planetary scientists. The hope is that the data from Juno will allow the team to work out a little more about its past, present and future.
The feature has tracked back to as early as 1830, and it’s believed the storm could have battered this gas giant for a minimum of 350 years.
Jupiter stands as the biggest newborn in our solar system family – actually, it is about two and a half times larger than the combined size of all the other planets. Despite its immense scale, it has no solid surface and is composed of around 90 percent hydrogen, with helium and assorted gases making up the rest. It could have a solid rocky core, or a molten core at its heart.
Juno has spent just over a year orbiting Jupiter and seeks to complement the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, a collaborative effort by ESA, NASA, and ASI that has yielded a remarkable array of discoveries since its 2004 arrival.
