10.25.18

Jovian White Oval

Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

A swirling, oval white cloud in Jupiter’s South South Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Known as White Oval A5, the feature is an anticyclonic storm. An anticyclone is a weather phenomenon where winds around the storm flow in the direction opposite to those of the flow around a region of low pressure.

Juno took the two images used to produce this color-enhanced view on Sept. 6, 2018, at 6:45 p.m. PDT (9:45 p.m. EDT) and 6:58 p.m. PDT (9:58 p.m. EDT) as the Juno spacecraft performed its 15th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was about 25,000 miles (40,500 kilometers) to 39,000 miles (63,000 kilometers) from Jupiter's cloud tops, above a southern latitude spanning from about 54 to 66 degrees. 

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and to process into image products at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam.