Jupiter’s Turbulent Atmosphere

Swirling bands of orange, cream, and pale blue wrap around the curve of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. This image comes from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been circling the giant planet since 2016. Juno swings in close during each orbit, dipping just above the cloud tops to capture views like this one before racing back out into space. What looks like a painting is actually the real face of another world, photographed from thousands of miles away and processed to bring out the colors our eyes could not otherwise see.

Those flowing stripes are not solid ground but massive belts of gas moving in opposite directions, driven by winds that can top 300 miles per hour. The darker orange areas mark where warmer material rises up, while the lighter zones are cooler, higher clouds. The bright ripples and curls near the bottom show storms churning through the atmosphere, some of them wider than entire countries on Earth. Because Jupiter has no surface to break up the weather, these storms can last for years or even centuries.

Much of the credit for turning raw Juno data into images like this goes to citizen scientists and amateur image processors, who volunteer their time to sort through the spacecraft's photographs and share the results with the public. It is a reminder that some of the most beautiful pictures of space are made by ordinary people working with the numbers a robot sends home.