NASA captures Jupiter's true colors and it's a special sight

Nowadays, every time I see an image of something in the universe, I complain about the doubt before feeling awe. I find myself wondering: This is, in fact, what does this thing look like?

Most often, scientists add artistic motifs to their space images. This is done not only for fun (albeit a lot of fun) but also because a bit of coloring goes a long way when emphasizing raw images of planets or depicting cosmic light. Cannot be detected by human students.

For astronauts, this means that as difficult as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is, you may have been trying to convince us that the Carina Nebula is nothing more than warm, melted toffee. Despite what elementary school textbooks say, Flower is not a yellow mustard ball. Contrary to what the Hubble Space Telescope suggests, the Veil Nebula is unfortunately not a rainbow worm. I can go on.

So, when I look at a picture of the extraterrestrial world, I know it. no Colorful, I watch a little longer than usual, and on Tuesday we are blessed with such a miracle.

Take a look at the left side of the following image taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft. This is what the surface of Jupiter would look like if we could somehow look at it as if we were worshipers of the moon. king of the solar system.

Juno's 43rd close encounter with the giant planet on July 5, 2022, gave us this image of Jupiter.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS data, image processing by Bjorn Jonsson.

Can't help but look to the right? same. But be careful. This is one of those suspicious photos that have been processed. It has increased color saturation and contrasts to make Jupiter's fine details appear clearer, NASA. He said in a statement. The agency explains that this manipulation was important to reduce noise or other artifacts in the image.

"This clearly shows some of the most interesting aspects of Jupiter's atmosphere," NASA said, including color contrast caused by differences in chemical composition, the three-dimensional nature of Jupiter's swirling vortices, and small, bright "emerging" clouds. that form in the upper atmosphere.

Of course, this variant of Jupiter's marbled skin is undoubtedly more striking, but consider how the left side is our reality. There is an orbit of spinning gas in space that can accommodate more than 1300 earths in it. And… maybe that sounds like it?

An image of the Carina Nebula taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.

NASA

Credit for creating our newest private lens on Jupiter goes to citizen scientist Bjorn Johnson, who collected publicly available data from NASA's Juno mission. Juno is a spaceship the width of a basketball court. It makes long circular orbits around the red-brown world, collecting information and images about its planetary inspiration.

Since its launch from Earth in 2011, Juno has been a force.

Amazing photos returned From images of Jupiter, ranging from whirlpools of sky blue and opal to a gorgeous looking pink display From Joe Jovian and even more faded, more realistic pictures from his layers.

JunoCam's latest image of massive storms adorning Jupiter's north pole.

On April 9, JunoCam captured what a flight on a spacecraft would look like. Citizen scientist Andrea Lack created this animation sequence using raw JunoCam image data.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS data, AndreaLuck image processing

In connection with Jonsson's new image of the gas giant, Juno was about 3,300 miles (5,300 km) above Jupiter's cloud tops at a latitude of about 50 degrees. "At that moment, the spacecraft was moving at about 130,000 miles per hour (209,000 kilometers per hour) relative to the planet," NASA said.

Another victory for Juno and another introspective cosmic treasure for us.

Things like this give me a strange feeling - a mixture of existential fear, wonder, and silence. It's a reminder of our small but amazingly intelligent view of the universe.