Juno’s Latest Flight Over Jupiter’s South Pole

Animation of six images acquired by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on March 27, 2017.

On Monday, March 27, at 4:52 a.m. EDT (08:52 UTC) NASA’s Juno spacecraft made its fifth close pass of Jupiter, passing about 2,700 miles (4,400 km) above the planet’s clouds while traveling at a relative speed of 129,000 mph (57.8 kilometers per second). The images above, captured with the JunoCam instrument, show the giant planet’s south pole during this P5 pass.

I combined the raw images in Photoshop, aligned them to the same horizontal plane, and applied some contrast- and color-enhancing adjustment layers to bring out the details in Jupiter’s stormy atmosphere.

The images below were also captured during the 3/27 P5 (which stands for Perijove 5) pass and were enhanced by me to pull out cloud detail.

*Image of an Earth-sized storm on Jupiter captured by Juno on March 27, 2017.*

*Jupiter’s south polar region on March 27, 2017. Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Jason Major.*

These images have not been specifically color-calibrated to any standard other than looking cool. But I did try to maintain the original colors while matching typical visible-light Jovian hues.

Juno will remain in 53-day-long elliptical orbits of Jupiter for the duration of its mission. The next close pass (P6) will occur on May 19.

Juno launched from Cape Canaveral on August 5, 2011, and entered orbit at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

Find the latest images from Jupiter on the JunoCam site here.

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