Juno sees something familiar looking out from Jupiter's rings
Imagine that you're standing on an alien world, far out in the galaxy. You look up and see a brilliant bed of stars above you, blanketing totally foreign sky.
But what if you were on a different planet a little closer to home? What would you see then?
A new photo beamed back from Jupiter by NASA's Juno probe, gives us a good idea of what that could be like.
The new Juno image gives us our first view of what it's like to look out from within Jupiter's rings -- yes, the huge planet has its own rings -- back toward something pretty familiar: the constellation Orion.
"The bright bands in the center of the image are the main ring of Jupiter’s ring system," NASA said in a statement.
"The bright star above the main ring is Betelgeuse, and Orion’s belt can be seen in the lower right."
While the photo may not look like much, it represents a brand new view of our solar system.
Juno is the first spacecraft to take a photo looking out from between Jupiter and its rings.
The spacecraft isn't done reshaping our view of the largest planet in our solar system either. Juno will continue to send back photos showing off Jupiter's cloud tops and storms along with other images of the huge world until its mission ends next year.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
