Juno’s Flyby of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Complete, and the Images and GIFs are SPECTACULAR!

GIF from frames taken by the Juno spacecraft on July 10, 2017. Frames edited and put together into this GIF by me.

The Juno spacecraft made a historic flyby of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a feature that’s raged for centuries. The flyby of the GRS occurred at about 7:06 PM PDT on July 10, 2017. If you missed my blog post on the flyby, you can find it here.

I made the GIF above using the frames the JunoCAM took during its flyby (with edits). A citizen scientist and good friend of mine, Jason Major, processed the image of the GRS below, and WHOA! Look at the clouds!! You can see more amazing image processing and cool science from Jason, here.

Processed image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot during Juno’s flyby on July 10, 2017.
Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Jason Major

Another image processed by Kevin M. Gill will have you in awe with Jupiter’s pearlescent swirls of clouds:

 

Juno flew just 5600 miles above the cloud tops of this giant storm with winds reaching as high as 400 miles per hour. When the team analyzes the data that the spacecraft took, we’ll learn more about this mysterious storm (I personally cannot contain my excitement). But for now, you can watch my GIF and look at images online to experience the awe of Juno as it flew over the Great Red Spot.