This image of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed a close flyby of the gas giant planet on Dec. 16.
Juno captured this color-enhanced image at 10:24 a.m. PST (1:24 p.m. EST) when the spacecraft was about 19,244 miles (30,970 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds at a latitude of 49.9 degrees south — roughly halfway between the planet’s equator and its south pole. Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.
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:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt