As NASA’s Juno mission completed its 43rd close flyby of Jupiter on July 5, 2022, its JunoCam instrument captured this striking view of vortices — hurricane-like spiral wind patterns — near the planet’s north pole.
These powerful storms can be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in height and hundreds of miles across. Figuring out how they form is key to understanding Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create the planet’s other atmospheric features. A NASA citizen science project, Jovian Vortex Hunter, seeks help from volunteer members of the public to spot and help categorize vortices and other atmospheric phenomena visible in JunoCam photos of Jupiter. As of July 2022, 2,404 volunteers had made 376,725 classifications using the Jovian Vortex Hunter project web site at https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/ramanakumars/jovian-vortex-hunter.
Learn moreNASA’s Juno Mission Spies Vortices Near Jupiter’s North Pole
Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Brian Swift © CC BY