These come from Juno, a mission sent in 2011 and orbiting Jupiter since 2016. Must say it wasn't really on my radar anymore, but looking at the timeline on Wikipedia, it's still going around and getting close ("perijove") every month and a week or so, at an ever-increasing longitude <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#Timeline" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#Timeline</a> The planned end of the mission is in about a year. The camera was "included in the payload to facilitate education and public outreach [but] later re-purposed to study the dynamics of Jupiter's clouds"
Juno was something about radar - penetrating the cloud layers to see what was below.<p>In college my son worked on the FFT engine that processed the radar data. He has code circling Jupiter!
Alien feel (and even unsettling at times).<p>I guess we have grown used to this by now, but from the Moon landing pictures, to the Mars rovers and the various asteroid and planetary missions the objects of the Solar system are now vivid, complex and above all, "real" places.
These kinds of images never fail to amaze me. I know there some editing going on to make them more visually accessible/impressive, but wow. Images are only going to get better, too.
It's so scary! All those swirls are like planet size hurricanes. Had Jupiter been bigger, it would have been a star, and life on earth would not have existed. Gives me chills.
Why is Jupiter so colorful?<p>If the variation of color are indicative of a similar variation in density, why is there so much turbulence in Jupiter, why are the upper layers not more consistent? Tidal motion? Anyone know?
JunoCam[1] is not a scientific instrument on Juno. It was added just to make cool images like this for us to enjoy. I for one is happy for that.<p>Of course, data is data so there is some science planned using it.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JunoCam" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JunoCam</a>
Breathtaking! Just imagine, a century from now, maybe later or sooner, we could visit planets like Jupiter, that once, we could only look at them from the photo. I hope the humanity lives on, and strives forward in engineering.