It's a latte bigger than Earth. â
This picture isnât from your local coffee shop, itâs from our spacecraft Juno as it passed by Jupiter. Jupiter is well known for its Great Red Spot, but itâs also home to anticyclonic storms, known as white ovals. White ovalâs can be storms the size of earth and can generate winds up to 335 miles per hour (539 kilometers per hour) and some storms can reach 60 miles (100 kilometers) tall.
Jupiter is strapped with âbeltsâ of white and red, that wrap around the planet. Traveling both east and west, why these belts are distinct is something mystery to scientists, one possibility is that the ammonia gas in the atmosphere travels up and down in alignment with the planets jet streams.
Junoâs prime mission of measuring and studying Jupiterâs atmosphere and magnetic structure was completed in 2021, but it will continue to measure the planetâs unique structure until at least 2025. This image was color enhanced by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Sean Doran.
Credit: Enhanced Image by Gerald Eichstädt and Sean Doran (CC BY-NC-SA)/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS)