News
-
05.03.21
JunoCam: The Little Outreach Camera Addressing Big Science
JunoCam’s close-up pictures of Jupiter’s storms are enabling scientists and amateurs, working together, to understand weather on Jupiter.
-
04.01.21
SwRI Scientists Discover a New Auroral Feature On Jupiter
The SwRI-led Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) orbiting Jupiter aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft has detected new faint aurora features, characterized by ring-like emissions, which expand rapidly over time. SwRI scientists determined that charged particles coming from the edge of Jupiter’s massive magnetosphere triggered these auroral emissions.
-
03.25.21
Jupiter’s Visible and Invisible Winds
This image from NASA’s Juno mission captures the northern hemisphere of Jupiter around the region known as Jet N7. The planet’s strong winds create the many swirling storms visible near the top of its atmosphere.
-
03.16.21
NASA's Juno Reveals Dark Origins to One of Jupiter’s Grand Light Shows
New results from the Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s Juno mission reveal for the first time the birth of auroral dawn storms – the early morning brightening unique to Jupiter’s spectacular aurorae.
-
03.09.21
Serendipitous Juno Spacecraft Detections Shatter Ideas About Origin of Zodiacal Light
Look up to the night sky just before dawn, or after dusk, and you might see a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. That luminous glow is the zodiacal light, or sunlight reflected toward Earth by a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the Sun. Astronomers have long thought that the dust is brought into the inner solar system by a few of the asteroid and comet families that venture in from afar. But now, a team of Juno scientists argues that Mars may be the culprit.
-
02.09.21
Deep Jet Streams in Jupiter’s Atmosphere
This view of Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere from NASA’s Juno spacecraft includes several of the planet’s southern jet streams. Using data from Juno’s instruments, scientists discovered that Jupiter’s powerful atmospheric jet streams extend far deeper than previously imagined. Evidence from Juno shows the jet streams and belts penetrate about 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) down into the planet.
-
01.21.21
A Hot Spot on Jupiter
This composite image shows a hot spot in Jupiter’s atmosphere. In the image on the left, taken on Sept. 16, 2020 by the Gemini North Telescope, the hot spot appears bright in the infrared at a wavelength of 5 microns.
-
01.13.21
NASA’s Juno Mission Expands Into the Future
NASA has authorized a mission extension for its Juno spacecraft exploring Jupiter. The agency’s most distant planetary orbiter will now continue its investigation of the solar system’s largest planet through September 2025, or until the spacecraft’s end of life. This expansion tasks Juno with becoming an explorer of the full Jovian system.
-
12.11.20
NASA's Juno Spacecraft Updates Quarter-Century Jupiter Mystery
Twenty-five years ago, NASA sent history's first probe into the atmosphere of the solar system's largest planet. But the information returned by the Galileo probe during its descent into Jupiter caused head-scratching: The atmosphere it was plunging into was much denser and hotter than scientists expected.
-
10.27.20
Juno Data Indicates 'Sprites' or 'Elves' Frolic in Jupiter's Atmosphere
An instrument on the spacecraft may have detected transient luminous events – bright flashes of light in the gas giant's upper atmosphere.
