The new Jupiter photo resembles a Van Gogh painting
This week, a new photo of Jupiter has just surfaced on the internet, blowing everyone’s mind. With the help of its Juno spacecraft, NASA took a colored picture of the clouds gathered above the northern hemisphere of the gas giant. After applying the color, the photo turned into a true work of art, as it really resembles famous paintings.
Two citizen scientists colored the new Jupiter photo
On May 23rd, Juno went on its 13th flyby close to the planet, thus producing the new photo of Jupiter. Initially, the image had no color, but NASA wanted to turn it into something remarkable. For this, it needed the help of two citizen scientists, Seán Doran and Gerald Eichstädt.
They took the non-processed image from the JunoCam and then applied color on top of it. This way, the combination between the swirling clouds and the nice shades created the effect of an oil painting in the new Jupiter photo. In fact, NASA encourages everyone to do this.
On its website, the space administration posts many of these JunoCam images without any processing. All these images are free to download, so anyone can take them and make any kind of adjustments they like. NASA encourages creativity and wants to see what people can make out of these photos.
The photo displays the swirling clouds in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere
When Juno took the new Jupiter photo, it was flying at about 9,600 miles from the clouds of the gas giant. In the northern hemisphere of Jupiter, at 56 degrees latitude, there is an area full of moving clouds that create all kinds of swirls. Those areas colored in light blue are the actual clouds, while the dark blue comes from cloud material that lies deeper in the atmosphere.
NASA launched Juno in space in August 2011, but it reached Jupiter only in July 2016. The main purpose of this spacecraft is to look at the Jovian atmosphere, as well as the magnetic and gravitational fields around it. Therefore, we might soon see more images resembling the new Jupiter photo with the painted clouds.
Image source: Flickr
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