NASA put everything in perspective, showing two Jupiter storms bigger than Earth in an Instagram photo.
Shoot, we already know that Jupiter’s the largest planet in the solar system. You could probably remember it from elementary school as the planet with the big red spot with storms in it.
The space agency’s Juno spacecraft captured the image last year. The storm’s so big that the Earth seemingly could fit in it.
The U.S. Sun reported that the Nov. 29, 2021 image has over a million likes.
Jupiter’s Two Storms Battle It Out
There’s no accurate way to measure the scale of the two Jupiter storms, but the smaller one has scientists guessing it could fit the Earth inside it.
Nasa said: “Two large rotating storms brew on Jupiter’s surface in this image captured by @NASASolarSystem Juno spacecraft’s visible-light imager, JunoCam, on Juno’s 38th pass at about 3,815 miles (6,140 km) altitude.
The image shows bright “pop-up” clouds seen above the lower storm. Those clouds put shadows on the cloud bank.
“As small as they appear in comparison to the large storm below, these clouds are typically 31 miles across.”
NASA said the Earth is about 7,900 miles across. Space.com said that Jupiter has a mean radius of 43,440.7 miles. Just the Red Spot of storms is 9,800 miles end to end.
One Instagram commenter admired the photo and said, “it’s beyond beautiful. The colors are just stunning. I can’t even believe it’s real. Good work.”
Scientists Still Getting Money’s Worth Out Of Juno
According to The U.S. Sun, Juno is currently NASA’s most distant planetary orbiter craft.
After fulfilling its 2016 mission, the spacecraft observes and snaps photos of the most distant planets in the Solar System. Its Jupiter photos have revealed that the Great Red Spot is shrinking, and scientists have not determined why.
Last week, Juno caught more fantastic video footage of a Jupiter phenomenon. According to Space.com, one of the planet’s moons comes with a magnetosphere (a common charged field of particles around a moon or planet) sounding like a dial-up modem. NASA recently released the 49-second clip.
“This soundtrack is just wild enough to make you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails past Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades,” Scott Bolton said in a NASA statement.
Bolton is the Juno Principal Investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
Juno got very close to the moon back on June 7. Its Waves instrument picked up the natural frequency.
Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. Furthermore, it’s bigger than Mercury and Pluto, according to NASA. According to Space.com, scientists think the moon has both a magnetosphere and a saltwater ocean.
