Jupiter has the blues, just like the rest of us
It's been a pretty crappy week here on Earth, so let's take our bad moods on a little interplanetary excursion.
Jupiter seems to be a nice fit.
The giant planet's roiling clouds, churning in its northern hemisphere, make it look like a peaceful Van Gogh painting in this newly-released photo taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft.
"The Juno spacecraft captured this image when the spacecraft was only 11,747 miles (18,906 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds — that’s roughly as far as the distance between New York City and Perth, Australia," NASA said in a statement about the image taken on October 24.
But don't let Jupiter's somewhat peaceful looking exterior fool you.
The world is actually a roiling hellscape of storms and extreme pressures that can only be created by the largest planet in our solar system.
You can get lost in the swirls and spins of Jupiter's clouds and storms, and Juno caught an amazing view of them.
The spacecraft, which arrived at Jupiter in July 2016 has beamed back image after stunning image of the huge world from its place in orbit.
Aside from just taking astonishing photos, Juno has also slowly transformed the way we understand Jupiter in general. The probe caught sight of Jupiter's auroras and spied storms and clouds high up in the planet's atmosphere.
Juno is designed to help scientists back on Earth figure out exactly how Jupiter formed by gazing at its atmosphere and using other instruments to hopefully learn even more about the mysterious, huge planet millions of miles away.
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.
