Space

Cool! Watch swirling storm on Jupiter

Rotating gray blob, with an orange blob in the top left corner.
Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran.

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A giant, spiraling storm in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere is captured in this animation from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The storm, called Oval BA, is approximately 5,000 miles (8,000 km) across and moves counterclockwise. You can see similar rotation in Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot, at the top left of the animation.

Juno took the nine images used to produce this movie sequence on December 21, 2018. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was between approximately 15,400 miles (24,800 km) and 60,700 miles (97,700 km) from the planet’s cloud tops above southern latitudes spanning about 36 to 74 degrees.

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this animation using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. You can peruse JunoCam’s raw images and process images yourself here.

Bottom line: Short movie shows a swirling storm on Jupiter.

Via NASA

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Posted 
February 6, 2019
 in 
Space

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