NASA Releases Gorgeous New Shots of Jupiter

New images taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft show a vast storm that is the planet's infamous Great Red Spot. 

And they are absolutely stunning. 

The pictures were taken while the Juno spacecraft flew by Jupiter at a distance a little over 2,000 miles from the planet's surface according to The Washington Post. 

What's more, it's taken Juno nearly five years to get there, and it's the closest any manmade craft has ever gotten to the storm.

NASA shared images taken by the spacecraft in an Instagram post.

 

Seeing spots! These new, close-up images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot reveal a tangle of dark, veinous clouds weaving their way through a massive crimson oval. The JunoCam image aboard our Juno spacecraft snapped pictures of the most iconic feature of the solar system's largest planetary inhabitant during its Monday (July 10) flyby. For hundreds of years, scientists have been observing, wondering and theorizing about Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm. It will take us some time to analyze all the data from not only JunoCam, but Juno's eight science instruments, to shed some new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot. As planned, citizen scientists took the raw images of the flyby from the JunoCam site and processed them, providng a higher level of detail than available in their raw form. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops to probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Credit (Image 1): NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Jason Major Credit (Image 2): NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin Gill Credit (Image 3): NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt #nasa #space #juno #junocam #jupiter #greatredspot #grs #spacecraft #solarsystem #planet #planetary #spacepic #picoftheday

A post shared by NASA (@nasa) on Jul 13, 2017 at 8:18am PDT

Scientists hope they can use the pictures to find out more about how the Great Red Spot - a gigantic weather system two times earth's size – works, why the spot looks red, and what the rest of the planet's atmosphere may be like. 

But as Dr. Amy Simon, a Senior Scientist in NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, explains, it's not so simple.
 
"We're talking about something that only makes up a really tiny portion of the atmosphere," she said in a NASA press release. "That's what makes it so hard to figure out exactly what makes the colors that we see."

Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere with swirls and storms, via @NASAJuno P7 - https://t.co/nJQRyouovz pic.twitter.com/oWamW3YjyU

— Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill) July 12, 2017

The storm is an old beast that's has been raging for more than one and a half centuries with winds that gust at 400 mph.

The largest hurricane in earth's record only had winds half that speed.

And there's no storm as big as it in the entire solar system.

First JunoCam raw images of Jupiter's Great Red Spot are here! Check 'em out: https://t.co/5tqqjs8o1w pic.twitter.com/WWWbOIJqmj

— Emily Calandrelli (@TheSpaceGal) July 12, 2017