Space and astronomy news
Confucius said, “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
When it comes to Jupiter, Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran can certainly see it. And lucky for us, they have the skill to bring that beauty to the fore for the rest of us to enjoy.
Continue reading “Another Beautiful Image of Jupiter from Juno During a Flyby. Great Work by Gerald Eichstadt and Sean Doran”
Though it looks like it to us, Jupiter’s clouds do no form a flat surface. Some of its clouds rise up above the surrounding cloud tops. The two bright spots in the right center of this image are much higher than the surrounding clouds.
Continue reading “Clouds On Jupiter Rising Up Above the Surrounding Atmosphere”
The JunoCam onboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft continues to provide we Earthbound humans with a steady stream of stunning images of Jupiter. We can’t get enough of the gas giant’s hypnotic, other-worldly beauty. This image of Io passing over Jupiter is the latest one to awaken our sense of wonder.
This image was processed by Kevin Gill, a NASA software engineer who has produced other stunning images of Jupiter.
Continue reading “Yes, This is Actually the Shadow of Io Passing Across the Surface of Jupiter.”
Is there a more complicated and sophisticated technological engineering project than a spacecraft? Maybe a particle accelerator or a fusion power project. But other than those two, the answer is probably no.
Spacecraft like the ESA’s JUICE don’t just pop out of the lab ready to go. Each spacecraft like JUICE is a singular design, and they require years—or even a decade or more—of work before they ever see a launch pad. With a scheduled launch date of 2022, JUICE is in the middle of all that work. Now its cameras are capturing images of Jupiter and its icy moons as part of its navigation calibration and fine-tuning.
“It felt particularly meaningful to conduct our tests already on our destination!”
Gregory Jonniaux, Vision-Based Navigation expert at Airbus Defence and Space.
There’s something about Jupiter that mesmerizes those who gaze at it. It’s intricate, dazzling clouds are a visual representation of the laws of nature that’s hard to turn away from. And even though the Juno spacecraft has been at Jupiter for almost three years now, and has delivered thousands of images of the gas giant’s colourful, churning clouds, we can’t seem to satisfy our appetite.
Continue reading “The Latest Insanely Beautiful Image of Jupiter Captured by Juno”
Jupiter: a massive, lifeless gas giant out there on the other side of the asteroid belt. It’s a behemoth, containing 2.5 times as much mass as all the other planets combined. To top it off, it’s named after the Roman God of War.
Earth: a tiny rocky world, almost too close to the Sun, where life rises and falls, punctuated repeatedly by extinctions. Compared to Jupiter, it’s a gum-drop world: Jupiter is 317.8 times the mass of Earth. And Earth is named after a goddess in German paganism, or so we think.
Continue reading “Jupiter or Earth? Which One’s Which, and Why Do They Look so Similar?”“Out of all the complexity flows beauty…”
Norman Kuring, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Thanks to a mission extension, NASA’s Juno probe continues to orbit Jupiter, being only the second spacecraft in history to do so. Since it arrived around the gas giant on July 5th, 2016, Juno has managed to gather a great deal of information on Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetic and gravity environment, and its interior structure.
In that time, the probe has also managed to capture some breathtaking images of Jupiter as well. But on December 21st, during the probe’s sixteenth orbit of the gas giant, the Juno probe changed things up when four of its cameras captured images of the Jovian moon Io, showcasing its polar regions and spotting what appeared to be a volcanic eruption.
Continue reading “Juno Saw One of Io’s Volcanoes Erupting During its Recent Flyby”
What would it be like to be onboard the Cassini orbiter as it made its way around Jupiter and Saturn and their moons? Pretty cool. Now a new video made from Cassini images pieces together parts of that stately journey.
For almost 200 years humans have been watching the Great Red Spot (GRS) on Jupiter and wondering what’s behind it. Thanks to NASA’s Juno mission, we’ve been getting better and better looks at it. New images from JunoCam reveal some of the deeper detail in our Solar System’s longest-lived storm.
Continue reading “JunoCam Wows Us Again With Detailed Images of the Great Red Spot”
In July of 2016, the Juno spacecraft established orbit around Jupiter, becoming the first spacecraft since the Galileo probe to study the planet directly. Since that time, the probe has been sending back vital information about Jupiter’s atmosphere, magnetic field and weather patterns. With every passing orbit – known as perijoves, which take place every 53 days – the probe has revealed more exciting things about this gas giant.
Continue reading “Another Juno Flyby, Another Amazing Sequence of Images of Jupiter”