NASA’s Juno observes Jupiter's complex colors during recent close flyby of the giant planet

NASA's Juno, the first spacecraft to peer below Jupiter's dense clouds to answer questions about the gas giant and the origins of our solar system, observed the complex colors and structure of clouds during its 43rd close flyby of the planet on July 5, 2022.

Using raw data from the JunoCam instrument aboard the Juno spacecraft, citizen scientist Björn Jonsson created the above two images. On the left, the image shows the colors that the human eye would see from the spacecraft's vantage point.

The image on the right was digitally processed by Jonsson to increase both the color saturation and contrast to sharpen small-scale features and to reduce compression artifacts and noise that typically appear in raw images.

"This clearly reveals some of the most intriguing aspects of Jupiter's atmosphere, including color variation that results from differing chemical composition, the three-dimensional nature of Jupiter's swirling vortices, and the small, bright “pop-up” clouds that form in the higher parts of the atmosphere," NASA wrote in a post.

Jupiter’s complex colors 🎨#JunoMission did its 43rd close flyby of the planet's cloud tops on July 5. A citizen scientist processed both images. The left shows colors the human eye can see, and the right shows color variations from different chemicals. https://t.co/SmkYIAkSxX pic.twitter.com/t04xYoa7Rv

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) August 30, 2022

Juno lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on August 5, 2011, on a 5-year journey to Jupiter - our solar system's largest planet arrived at the planet on July 4, 2016.

The solar-powered spacecraft is now in an extended mission phase, which tasks it with continuing its investigations through September 2025, includes close passes of Jupiter's north polar cyclones, flybys of the Jovian moons Europa and Io (along with Ganymede), as well as the first exploration of the faint rings encircling the planet.