New photo shows swirling storms ripping through Jupiter's clouds
Jupiter is a stormy world with turbulent gas and an ever-changing array of visible tempests swirling in the huge planet's clouds.
Eight of those storms are now swirling on Jupiter, and some of them stand out in great detail in a new photo released by NASA this week taken by the agency's Juno spacecraft tasked with exploring Jupiter.
The storms — which look like eight white pearls dotted throughout the planet's southern hemisphere — are rotating counter-clockwise and have been seen by spacecraft before, according to NASA.
"Since 1986, these white ovals have varied in number from six to nine," the space agency said in a statement.
Juno's JunoCam instrument snapped this picture of Jupiter on Dec. 11 as it was about 40,000 miles from the gas giant during the spacecraft's third close pass with Jupiter since it made it into orbit in July.
Scientists working with JunoCam release the images gathered at Jupiter online to allow amateur astronomers and photo editors the chance to process their own images taken by the far-flung spacecraft.
Mission controllers specifically developed JunoCam to encourage the public to get involved with the mission.
Scientists working with NASA are asking people around the world with their own telescopes to upload images they take of Jupiter in order to help them pick out which parts of the planet they should photograph during each close pass.
It hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for Juno since it arrived at Jupiter.
Valves used in the spacecraft's fuel system seem to be malfunctioning, preventing mission controllers from moving Juno into a lower orbit that would allow them to gather science more quickly. For the time being, Juno is going to sit tight and collect science from its 53-day orbit until mission managers figure out the root of the issue.
"We have a healthy spacecraft that is performing its mission admirably, and we are able to obtain great science every time we fly by,” Rick Nybakken, project manager for Juno, said in a statement. “What we do not want to do is add any unnecessary risk, so we are moving forward carefully.”
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.
