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Sent primarily to investigate the origin and evolution of Jupiter, Juno has been able to take in bonus observations of the planet's four major moons - Callisto, Ganymede, Europa and now Io. It performed its close flyby of Ganymede in 2021, and of Europa earlier this year. These passes produced some novel insights from Juno's microwave radiometer. Intended to look deep into the clouds of Jupiter, this instrument has also been able to see down through the ice layers of Ganymede and Europa for tens of kilometres. These two moons are of particular interest because they're both thought to hide...

Citizen scientists have created deep-space portraits of Jupiter’s moon Europa that are not only awe-inspiring, but also worthy of further scientific scrutiny. Science enthusiasts have processed the new JunoCam images of Jupiter’s icy moon, with results that are out of this world. Citizen scientists have furnished unique perspectives of the recent close flyby of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. By processing raw images from JunoCam, the spacecraft’s public-engagement camera, members of the general public have created deep-space portraits of the Jovian moon that are not only spectacular, but also worthy of further scientific investigation. “Starting with our...

The spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter’s largest moon than any other in more than two decades, offering dramatic glimpses of the icy orb. The first two images from NASA Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of Jupiter’s giant moon Ganymede have been received on Earth. The photos – one from the Jupiter orbiter’s JunoCam imager and the other from its Stellar Reference Unit star camera – show the surface in remarkable detail, including craters, clearly distinct dark and bright terrain, and long structural features possibly linked to tectonic faults.This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager during Juno’s June...

NASA’s Juno mission captured this look at the southern hemisphere of Jupiter on Feb. 17, 2020, during the spacecraft’s most recent close approach to the giant planet. Not only is Jupiter the largest planet orbiting the Sun, it contains more than twice the amount of material of all other objects in the solar system combined — including all the planets, moons, asteroids and comets. In composition, Jupiter resembles a star, and scientists estimate that if it had been at least 80 times more massive at its formation, it could have become a type of star called a red dwarf rather...

The woman behind the film says she wouldn’t write it today. When Diablo Cody set out to write her first screenplay more than a decade ago, she said her inspiration came from one question: “What’s a story that’s never been told?” With that, the 2007 Oscar-winning film “Juno” was born — a coming-of-age comedy chronicling the ups and downs in the life of a 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant unexpectedly and decides to give her baby up for adoption. ... For Cody though, who has been vocal about being an abortion rights advocate, having her breakout movie be associated with...

Nasa has released stunning images of Jupiter taken from the Juno spacecraft. The breathtaking images show swirling cloud belts and tumultuous vortices within Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. Scientists said the photos allowed them to see the planet’s weather system in greater detail. According to the space station, the brighter colours in the images represent clouds made up of ammonia and water, while the darker blue-green spirals represent cloud material "deeper in Jupiter's atmosphere." At the time Juno was about 9,600 miles from the planet's cloud tops. The Juno satellite was launched in order to improve Nasa’s understanding of the solar...

Io boasts more than 130 active volcanoes with an estimated 400 total, making it the most volcanically active place in the Solar System. Juno used its Jovian Infrared Aurora Mapper (JIRAM) to take spectacular photographs of Io during Perijove 7 last July... Juno’s Io looks like it’s on fire. Because JIRAM sees in infrared, a form of light we sense as heat, it picked up the signatures of at least 60 hot spots on the little moon on both the sunlight side (right) and the shadowed half. Like all missions to the planets, Juno’s cameras take pictures in black and...

Jupiter is a big, complex, chaotic planet. It has long been known as the most dominant feature in our sun’s orbit, but it wasn’t until last May that the planet’s internal features began to be revealed. During a few close passes, NASA’s $1.1 billion Juno spacecraft collected data on the gas giant that revealed cyclones the size of Earth and a surprisingly strong magnetic field. Now, data collected by Juno have uncovered more never-before-seen features on its north and south poles. In a study published this week in the journal Nature, a team of scientists report bizarre geometric storms surrounding...

Jupiter's south pole is seen in a series of time-lapse images taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft during its 11th close flyby of the giant planet on Feb. 7, 2018. Credit: Gerald Eichstadt/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS You've never seen Jupiter's south pole quite like this. A new photo by NASA's Juno spacecraft show Jupiter's south pole as seen from above during a recent close encounter on Feb. 7. The photo is actually a series of images taken over time by Juno as the probe whipped around Jupiter during its 11th flyby of the giant planet.   ... The time-lapse views of Jupiter were taken over...

As part of its sixth orbit of Jupiter’s turbulent cloud tops, Juno passed close to Jupiter’s center (aka. perijove), which took place at 6:55 p.m. PDT (9:55 p.m. EDT). Eleven minutes later – at 7:06 p.m. PDT (10:06 p.m. EDT) – the probe flew over the Great Red Spot. In the process, Juno was at a distance of just 9,000 km (5,600 miles) from the anticyclonic storm, which is the closest any spacecraft has ever flown to it. During the flyby, Juno had all eight of its scientific instruments (as well its imager, the JunoCam) trained directly on the storm....

"Cool image time! Yesterday I posted a short gif created by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, using twelve Juno images, that showed some cloud changes over time... Today, I discovered that Eichstädt has created an even more spectacular movie, which I have embedded below the fold, based on images taken during Juno’s tenth close fly-by."

“In truth, the GRS has been shrinking for a long time,” Glenn Orton of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told Business Insider. The storm was once as large as four times the diameter of Earth, but more recent observations have shown that it’s rapidly losing steam. “Now it’s something like 13 degrees wide in longitude and only 1.3 times the size of the Earth,” Orton says. “Nothing lasts forever.” Late last year, Juno revealed some surprising information about the huge storm, including how deep into the planet it goes. The data showed that the storm is up to 100 times deeper...

A stunning new Nasa image shows raging storms on Jupiter with clouds that stretch for thousands of miles - and it looks just like an oil painting. Nasa's Juno spacecraft was a little more than one Earth diameter from Jupiter - or 8,292 miles (13,345 kilometres) - when it captured this mind-bending view of the planet's tumultuous atmosphere. The incredible colour-enhanced image was captured at a latitude of 48.9 degrees and depicts vasts swirling cloud formations that travel at about 129,000 mph (60 km/s) over the gas giant planet's surface. The spacecraft, which has been orbiting the planet since 2016,...

In the early 1960s, scientists developed the gravity-assist method, where a spacecraft would conduct a flyby of a major body in order to increase its speed. Many notable missions have used this technique, including the Pioneer, Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, and New Horizons missions. In the course of many of these flybys, scientists have noted an anomaly where the increase in the spacecraft’s speed did not accord with orbital models. This has come to be known as the “flyby anomaly”, which has endured despite decades of study and resisted all previous attempts at explanation. To address this, a team of researchers...

Jupiter’s gravity field varies with depth, which indicated that material is flowing as far down as 3,000 km (1,864 mi). Combined with information obtained during previous perijoves, this latest data suggests that Jupiter’s core is small and poorly defined. This flies in the face of previous models of Jupiter, which held that the outer layers are gaseous while the interior ones are made up of metallic hydrogen and a rocky core. ... Another interesting find was that Jupiter’s gravity field varies with depth, which indicated that material is flowing as far down as 3,000 km (1,864 mi). Combined with information...

The original plans for the Juno mission to Jupiter didn’t include a color camera. You don’t need color images when the mission’s main goals are to map Jupiter’s magnetic and gravity fields, determine the planet’s internal composition, and explore the magnetosphere. But a camera was added to the manifest, and the incredible images from the JunoCam have been grabbing the spotlight. ... Hundreds of ‘amateur’ image processing enthusiasts have been processing raw data from the JunoCam, turning them into stunning images, many reminiscent of a swirling Van Gogh ‘starry night’ or a cloudscape by Monet. ... Many of the images...

Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the planet’s surface than previously thought. “We are excited to share these early discoveries, which help us better understand what makes Jupiter so fascinating,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "It was a long trip to get to Jupiter, but these...

NASA made the decision to leave the Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter, in its current orbit that cycles around the gas giant every 53 days. The choice hinges on worries surrounding Juno's main engine, which displayed some out-of-the-ordinary readings as the team was preparing to shorten the probe's orbit. “Juno is healthy, its science instruments are fully operational, and the data and images we’ve received are nothing short of amazing,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “The decision to forego the burn is the right thing to do – preserving a valuable asset so...

NASA's Juno Jupiter probe won't be settling into its final orbit around the giant planet this week after all. Juno was scheduled to fire its main engine for the final time during the probe's close Jupiter flyby on Wednesday (Oct. 19), in a maneuver that would reduce the time it takes the spacecraft to circle the gas giant from 53 Earth days down to 14 days. But the mission team decided to postpone the burn in order to investigate an issue with valves that are part of Juno's fuel-pressurization system, NASA officials said. "Telemetry indicates that two helium check valves...