06.23.23

NASA’s Juno Mission Observes High-Altitude Hazes in Jupiter’s atmosphere

As the spacecraft flew low over the giant planet’s cloud tops, its JunoCam instrument captured this look at bands of high-altitude haze forming above cyclones in an area known at Jet N7. Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Björn Jónsson © CC NC SA

On March 1, 2023, NASA’s Juno mission completed its 49th close flyby of Jupiter. As the spacecraft flew low over the giant planet’s cloud tops, its JunoCam instrument captured this look at bands of high-altitude haze forming above cyclones in an area known at Jet N7.

Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson processed a raw image from the JunoCam instrument, enhancing the contrast and sharpness. At the time the image was taken, Juno was about 5,095 miles (8,200 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 66 degrees.

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.

More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.