Please leave me alone while I stare at this photo of Jupiter
Hi. It's been a hard week. Come look at this photo of Jupiter with me, won't you?
The image, taken by NASA's somewhat troubled, but still functioning Juno spacecraft orbiting the giant plant, shows off Jupiter's clouds swirling and storms brewing.
It's pretty, right?
The circular storm near the bottom is actually the third-largest storm of its kind discovered on the planet, according to NASA. Scientists have also been tracking the development of the storm for about 23 years, the space agency added.
So, while it's not quite the largest storm, it's still pretty cool, right? Here, look at it again:
Juno took the photo when it was about 10,300 miles above the tops of Jupiter's clouds on Dec. 11, 2016, as it made a close flyby of the planet.
The new photo is just one of many taken by the spacecraft's JunoCam, tasked with giving us a new perspective on the ancient world.
JunoCam's photos are released to the public for processing by people around the world. This photo, for example, was processed by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstaedt and John Rogers.
At the moment, Juno is in a 53-day orbit around Jupiter, though it was originally expected to be in a much shorter orbit closer to the planet.
Propulsion problems stopped that from happening, so for now, scientists are going to have to wait it out between close flybys of the planet.
And I guess that means we'll have to wait it out here on Earth, too.
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.
