During a recent close flyby of the gas giant Jupiter, our Juno spacecraft captured this stunning series of images showing swirling cloud patterns on the planet’s south pole. At first glance, the series might appear to be the same image repeated. But closer inspection reveals slight changes, which are most easily noticed by comparing the far-left image with the far-right image.
Directly, the images show Jupiter. But, through slight variations in the images, they indirectly capture the motion of the Juno spacecraft itself, once again swinging around a giant planet hundreds of millions of miles from Earth.
Juno captured this color-enhanced time-lapse sequence of images on Feb. 7 between 10:21 a.m. and 11:01 a.m. EST. At the time, the spacecraft was between 85,292 to 124,856 miles (137,264 to 200,937 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet with the images centered on latitudes from 84.1 to 75.5 degrees south.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt
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me during our first anniversary @hella-gay-artist
Light flickering
Reminds me of where I live
It’s annoying
But that’s just how it is
It makes it feel like more of a horror movie
And I know that there are monsters under the bed
I consider it camping
Yet it’s just life
It will carry on even if I can’t see the stars,
Swirling in time
Above my head,
A universe that I cannot touch
My mind
Is a strobe light
And I feel a bit dizzy
It’s a bit too much to take in, again
My heart is light with carbon dioxide
The candle a flickerin within
And I'm scared that
I can smell the smoke of the future