Items tagged with Jupiter
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured images of Jupiter, which show off the giant planet’s cyclones, wind shear, and violent storms churning in its atmosphere. Hubble monitors Jupiter and the other outer solar system planets each year under the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy Program (OPAL), in order to document the...
Read more...
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been busy this month, snapping images of both Jupiter and its moon lo. Juno was first launched in 2011. It reached Jupiter in 2016, and has since been gathering data on the giant gas planet and its moons.
The Juno spacecraft has been fascinating NASA scientists and astronomers back on...
Read more...
Great balls of fire, NASA’s Juno spacecraft snapped a closeup image of Jupiter’s moon lo that showed an erupting volcano. Juno has performed more than 55 flybys of Jupiter, as well as the closest flyby of the giant planet’s moon lo in over 20 years.
NASA says that Jupiter’s moon lo is the most volcanically active...
Read more...
NASA's Webb telescope discovered a high-speed jet over Jupiter's equator. The new finding is giving researchers insight into how the layers of the gas giant's atmosphere interact.
Jupiter has some very well-known features, like its Great Red Spot which is large enough to engulf Earth. This mammoth planet, which...
Read more...
NASA's Europa Clipper received a massive upgrade in preparation for its launch scheduled for October 2024. The space agency added a high-gain antenna, one ET would have loved to have had to phone home with, that will enable the spacecraft to communicate with ground control back here on Earth from hundreds of millions...
Read more...
NASA's Juno spacecraft captured the green glow of a lightning strike in the midst of a vortex near Jupiter's north pole as it made its 31st close flyby of the planet. The orbital path of Juno will take the spacecraft close to the giant planet's night side, which will provide even more opportunities for the...
Read more...
A message in a bottle is headed to Jupiter's moon Europa later this year, and anyone can add their name to it. The message contains a poem written by US Poet Laureate Ada Limon titled, "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa."
The "Message in a Bottle" campaign will include names received before midnight on...
Read more...
As part of its "Astronomy Picture of the Day" (APOD), NASA posted this photo of anti-cyclone storms captured by the Juno spacecraft over Jupiter that's equally beautiful as it is ominous. We're just glad we don't have things like that here on earth!
On a recent low-level flyby over the largest planet in our solar...
Read more...
NASA's Lucy mission captured its first images of Trojan asteroids in late March. The four Jupiter Trojan asteroids the spacecraft viewed were Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and Orus.
Most of Lucy's target asteroids, called "Trojans" after characters from Greek mythology, are left over from the solar system's...
Read more...
NASA is scouring engineering data taken by the orbiter's JunoCam in order to understand why the majority of images from the spacecraft were not acquired. The missing data is from Juno's most recent flyby of Jupiter on January 22, 2023.
The Juno spacecraft began its journey toward Jupiter back in August 2011. After...
Read more...
The largest volcanic eruption detected yet on Io, Jupiter's innermost moon, was observed in late 2022. The eruption was detected by Jeff Morgenthaler of the Planetary Science Institute utilizing the PSI's Io Input/Output observatory (IoIO).
Jupiter's moon Io is no stranger to volcanic eruptions. The first volcanic...
Read more...
ESA's Mars Express captured a rare moment, when Mars' moon Deimos passed in front of Jupiter and its four largest moons. The footage precedes the European Space Agency's upcoming launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer next year.
Since launching in 2003, Mars Express has been able to create the most complete map...
Read more...
9/26/2022 Update
As a reminder, Jupiter's closest pass to Earth is tonight, so don't miss the opportunity to see it! It is a busy night for space as the NASA DART mission is reaching its conclusion this evening as well. Original story below...
Jupiter will be in opposition to the Sun later this month, presenting an...
Read more...
A new study by researchers at UC Riverside created detailed models on data from the solar system as it appears in modern day, as well alternatives to the solar system with a slightly different orbital path. One alternative solar system appeared to be effective in making Earth more habitable, by simply making Jupiter's...
Read more...
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to amaze and give greater detail for NASA scientists to plunder through. New images captured of Jupiter by the space telescope is giving clues to the massive planet's inner life.
Jupiter is not lacking in activity, as mammoth storms, powerful winds, auroras and...
Read more...
A new image taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft reveals a stunning view of vortices near Jupiter's north pole. The image above of the hurricane-like spirals was shared by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and edited by citizen scientist Brian Swift.
Jupiter is known for its Great Red Spot, an anticyclone large enough for...
Read more...
Venus and Jupiter are on what looks like a collision source in the night sky, in a rare otherworldly event. The two planets have been inching closer to one another every day this month.
If you looked up at the sky this morning, you may have noticed what appeared to be two bright stars close to one another. Chances...
Read more...
A group of Stanford researchers may have found a potential commonality between Jupiter's moon, Europa, and Earth's own Greenland. Ice-penetrating radar from Greenland suggests this shared feature with Europa could increase the potential for life on the icy Jovian moon.
Scientists have long thought that Europa could...
Read more...
In two new studies, Hubble astronomers have identified freakish weather conditions on two Jupiter-sized exoplanets. On one planet it is raining vaporized rock, while on another its upper atmosphere is getting hotter rather than cooler.
When temperatures here on Earth begin reaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit and above...
Read more...
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through an “intense and violent” process. The discovery seems to support a highly argued theory for how a planet like Jupiter forms, called “disk instability.”
Planets are created from material that originated in a...
Read more...
A video shared by NASA on its Instagram page for National Pizza Day has gone viral for the most delicious reason. The video is from NASA's Juno mission, and showcases what cyclones look like in infrared on the giant gas planet.
NASA's Juno mission has been sending back some interesting pictures of Jupiter, which...
Read more...
NASA's NuSTAR space observatory revealed the highest-energy light ever detected from Jupiter, solving a 30-year old mystery in the process. The Ulysses mission did not detect the high-energy light, as it flew by the planet back in 1992 and it left researchers scratching their heads as to why.
Up close studies by...
Read more...
