Mocha Swirls in Jupiter's Turbulent Atmosphere

©NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko Brian Swift

Jupiter

During its 36th low pass over Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this view of striking cloud bands and swirls in the giant planet's mid-southern latitudes.

The dark, circular vortex near the center of the image is a cyclone that spans roughly 250 miles (about 400 kilometers). The color at its center is likely to be the result of descending winds that cleared out upper-level clouds, revealing darker material below.

Citizen scientist Brian Swift used a raw JunoCam image digitally projected onto a sphere to create this view. It has been rotated so that north is up. The original image was taken on Sept. 2, 2021, at 4:09 p.m. PDT (7:09 p.m. EDT). At the time, the spacecraft was about 16,800 miles (about 27,000 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops, at a latitude of about 31 degrees south.

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at . More information about NASA citizen science can be found at and .

More information about Juno is at and For more about this finding and other science results, see