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May 21, 2018
Jupiter Cloud Animation from Juno
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Jupiter Cloud Animation from Juno
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
How do Jupiter's clouds move?
To help find out, images taken with NASA's
Juno spacecraft during its
last pass
near Jupiter have been analyzed and digitally extrapolated into a
time-lapse video.
The eight-second time-lapse video,
digitally extrapolated between two images taken only nine minutes apart, estimates how
Jupiter's clouds move over 29 hours.
Abstractly, the result appears something like a
psychedelic
paisley dream.
Scientifically, however, the computer animation shows that
circular storms tend to swirl, while
bands and zones
appear to flow.
This overall motion is not surprising and
has been seen on
time-lapse videos of
Jupiter before,
although never in this detail.
The featured region
spans about four times the area of Jupiter's
Great Red Spot.
Results from Juno
are showing, unexpectedly, that
Jupiter's weather phenomena can extend deep below its cloud tops.
