These pictures were taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its seventh science flyby over Jupiter. The spacecraft is in a wide orbit around the planet, move down quickly every 53 days to gather datas and take images. The rest of the time it spends off the planet, to avoid its intense radiation.
Juno moved down to within 3,500 kilometers of the cloud tops of the planet to study the planet in detail, like how its weird magnetic field works. “The surface patterns found near the poles, are highly different from what was expected,” John Leif Jørgensen from the Technical University of Denmark, and a co-investigator on Juno’s Magnetometer (MAG) instrument
Juno’s primary mission, during which it will perform 12 orbits of Jupiter, will end in July 2018. After that, if the spacecraft is still in good health, then there’s a chance the mission could be extended.
For now though, lets take a look at some glorious new pictures of Jupiter
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