What does Jupiter look like up close? Most images of
Jupiter are taken from far away, either from
Earth or from a great enough distance that nearly half the planet is visible.
This shot, though, was composed from images taken relatively
close in, where less than half of the planet was visible. From here,
Jupiter still appears
spherical but
perspective distortion now makes it look more like a
marble. Visible on Jupiter's cloud tops are a prominent dark
horizontal belt containing a white oval cloud, and a white zone cloud, both of which circle the planet. The Great Red Spot looms on the upper right. The
featured image was taken by the robotic Juno spacecraft in February during its 17th close pass of our Solar System's largest planet.
Juno's mission, now extended into 2021, is to study Jupiter in new ways. Juno's data has already
enabled discoveries that include
Jupiter's magnetic field being surprisingly lumpy, and that some of
Jupiter's cloud systems run about 3,000 kilometers into the planet.
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