Juno News

Director Jason Reitman is planning to make a new "Ghostbuster" film.

During the course of its 11th science flyby of the solar system's giant planet, Juno captured a massive close-up view of a storm with bright cloud tops.

The findings, based on based on data collected by the Juno mission, will improve understanding of Jupiter's interior structure, core mass and, eventually, its origin.

The Great Red Spot is a giant oval of crimson-colored clouds in Jupiter's southern hemisphere that race counterclockwise around the oval's perimeter with wind speeds greater than any storm on Earth.

According to NASA, the closest approach was at 6:36 am PST (9:36 am PST) Earth-received time.

At the time, Juno was a little more than one Earth diameter from Jupiter.

Juno also has detected a new radiation zone, just above the gas giant's atmosphere, near the equator.

Juno captured this image when the spacecraft was only 11,747 miles (18,906 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds — that’s roughly as far as the distance between New York City and Perth, Australia.

At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 33,115 kilometres from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of minus 52.96 degrees.  

Juno's next close flyby of Jupiter will occur on December 16.

NASA released 11 colour-enhanced images of the giant planet with the south pole on the left (11th image in the sequence) and the north pole on the right (first image in the sequence).

The team was not surprised that electric potentials play a role in their generation. 

This storm is a long-lived anticyclonic oval named North Temperate Little Red Spot 1 (NN-LRS-1); it has been tracked at least since 1993, and may be older still.

This mission was the closest a spacecraft has ever flown directly over the 16,000km-wide great red spot, passing as close as 3,500km above the planet and about 9,000km above the clouds of the colossal storm itself.

This mission will be a part of Juno's sixth science flyby of the gas giant's mysterious cloud tops.

This mission will be a part of Juno's sixth science flyby of the gas giant's mysterious cloud tops.

Citizen scientists often have a gala time creating the best enhanced-colour images of gas giant by using data delivered by Juno.

Taking advantage of the data provided by JunoCam, citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran have managed to create a stunning enhanced-color image of Jupiter’s bands of light and dark clouds.

The image was acquired by Juno while it was looking directly at the Jovian south pole, on February 2, 2017, at 6:06 am PST (9:06 am EST) from an altitude of about 63,400 miles (102,100 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops.

Juno is currently in a 53-day orbit, and its next close flyby of Jupiter will occur on March 27, 2017.