Astronomy - A crescent Jupiter and the Great Red Spot

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko.

This image of a crescent Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot was created by a citizen scientist (Roman Tkachenko) using data from Juno’s JunoCam instrument. 

You can also see a series of storms shaped like white ovals, known informally as the “string of pearls.” Below the Great Red Spot a reddish long-lived storm known as Oval BA is visible.

The image was taken on 11 December 2016 at 2230 GMT, as the Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter.

 At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 458,800 kilometres (285,100 miles) from the planet.

JunoCam’s raw images are available at www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam for the public to peruse and process into image products.