An illustration of NASA’s Juno spacecraft flying above the clouds of Jupiter.
NASA’s Juno mission has been orbiting Jupiter and snapping stunning photos for more than seven years.
Jupiter’s southern hemisphere is a chaotic mess of swirling gas and storms.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Rita Najm © (CC BY)
The spacecraft launched more than 10 years ago, on August 5, 2011 and is the ninth NASA spacecraft to explore Jupiter.
This Juno image of Jupiter reveals the planet’s distinctive bands that wrap around the entire planet.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran
As it sped towards Jupiter, Juno snapped a goodbye photo of Earth, proving that its cameras were ready for space.
The Juno spacecraft’s JunoCam caught this image of Earth as it sped past to get a gravitational boost towards Jupiter.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems
Juno finally fell into orbit around the giant, gaseous planet in 2016, less than a year following the previous mission, Cassini.
Juno snapped this photo of a “Jupiterrise” on one of its first flybys in 2016.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Alex Mai
Since launch, the probe has traveled more than 1 billion miles, and its JunoCam instrument has taken hundreds to thousands of photos.
Juno captures Jupiter’s hazy atmosphere in stunning detail.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Björn Jónsson © (CC NC SA)
Juno beams the raw data to Earth as black-and-white photo layers that represent red, blue, and green.
A raw image of Jupiter in blue, green, and red.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS
Then citizen scientists merge the layers and process them to make stunning, colorful portraits of Jupiter and its moons.
Jupiter’s reddish-orange South Temperate Belt, with the Great Red Spot, the most dominant atmospheric feature in the planet’s southern hemisphere.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Navaneeth Krishnan (S CC BY)
They enhance the colors to highlight different bands of Jupiter’s atmosphere, storms, and clouds.
Jupiter’s reddish-orange North Temperate Belt, with two gray-colored anticyclones.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill (CC-BY)
This enhanced image shows the complexity of Jupiter’s colors.
This color saturation and contrast in this image were enhanced to sharpen the details of Jupiter’s atmosphere.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Björn Jónsson © (CC NC SA)
Juno’s orbit takes it far from Jupiter, then swings it back towards the planet for close flybys.
Clouds swirl around each other on Jupiter.
NASA/JPL/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Alexis Tranchandon/Solaris
During those flybys, the probe has flown over Jupiter’s north pole, where eight storms rage around a giant, Earth-sized cyclone at the center.
Juno’s most recent image of cyclones at Jupiter’s north pole (left) and a composite infrared image of these cyclones (right).
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Navaneeth Krishnan S CC BY 3.0; NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
The planet’s south pole is no less stunning. Juno gave us the first close-up pictures ever taken of Jupiter’s poles.
A photo of Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles
Juno even captured this eerie image of a “face” in Jupiter’s atmosphere, just before Halloween.
Can you spot the face in this image? The clouds and storms resemble a mouth and a pair of eyes in Jupiter’s far northern region.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Vladimir Tarasov © (CC BY)
Seen together, the series of photos that Juno snaps during each flyby shows the spacecraft’s journey.
Image processor Seán Doran created this composite to show the spacecraft’s approach to Jupiter.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The successive images show Juno zipping from one pole to the other in just a few hours, approaching Jupiter and then flying away.
These images were taken as Juno left Jupiter.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
But Juno’s mission isn’t about pretty pictures. It’s looking for clues about how Jupiter formed and how it evolved.
White ovals in Jupiter’s S. South Temperate Belt.
NASA/JPL/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Justin Cowart (CC BY 3.0)
That history can help scientists study the beginnings of our solar system and identify clues about Jupiter-like gas giants orbiting other stars.
Jupiter’s swirling clouds enhanced to show their intricate shapes and colors.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Sean Doran
Juno measured Jupiter’s magnetic field for the first time, finding it far more powerful than scientists expected. Jupiter’s magnetic field is 10 times more powerful than the strongest field on Earth.
A mass of swirling clouds and storms on Jupiter.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran
A year after its arrival, Juno zipped past Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a raging storm near the planet’s equator. It discovered that this cyclone goes 200 miles deep — that’s 50 to 100 times as deep as Earth’s oceans.
Scientists animated this Juno image of the Great Red Spot based on velocity data from the spacecraft and models of the storm’s winds.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt/Justin Cowart
Cyclones spin in the same direction as the planet, but anticyclones spin in the opposite direction. Both are found all over Jupiter, in varying sizes.
A white anticyclone swirls on Jupiter’s surface.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill (CC BY 2.0)
Juno has also spotted the aurora ribboning across Jupiter’s south pole. They’re like auroras on Earth, but hundreds of times more powerful and, unlike other planets’ auroras, emit powerful X-rays.
Jupiter’s southern aurora in infrared.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
The spacecraft captured the shadow of Jupiter’s icy satellite Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
Ganymede (right) casts a shadow on Jupiter’s surface (left).
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Thomas Thomopoulos (CC BY); NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt compiled Juno’s imagery into a time-lapse video of its June flyby, which took the spacecraft past Jupiter and Ganymede.
During its 53rd close flyby of Jupiter, Juno captured the planet with its volcanically active moon, Io, floating in space.
Jupiter and its volcanically active moon Io captured together.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Alain Mirón Velázquez © (CC BY)
Jupiter has 95 moons. In this dramatic image, the moon Io casts its shadow on the planet. If you could stand on Jupiter it would look like a full solar eclipse.
Io casts its shadow on Jupiter.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill (CC-BY)
Juno was originally set for a fiery death in Jupiter’s atmosphere in 2021, but NASA extended its mission through September 2025 so it could observe Ganymede, Io, and Europa more closely.
A cyclonic storm captured during Juno’s 23rd flyby of Jupiter.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill, © CC BY
In the process, Juno is sure to beam back more photos of the largest planet in our solar system and its neighboring worlds.
Colorful swirling cloud belts span Jupiter’s surface.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Tanya Oleksuik (CC BY NC SA 3.0)
