NASA’s Juno orbiter delivers a fresh batch of blimmin’ beauties from Jupiter

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Jupiter as seen by Juno
Jupiter’s northern hemisphere is featured in this processed view captured by the Juno orbiter’s JunoCam imager during the probe’s close flyby on Oct. 24. (NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstadt Photo)

Artistic amateur astronomers have started leveraging the latest looks from NASA’s Juno orbiter to produce fresh views of Jupiter, including close-ups of storm swirls that look like pearls.

The raw material was captured on Oct. 24 during Juno’s eighth close-in photo op.

Juno entered orbit around the giant planet on the Fourth of July last year, and its elliptical orbit produces a close encounter every 54 days. The probe’s primary scientific mission is to study Jupiter’s magnetic field, composition and gravity field — but it also has a camera known as JunoCam that takes closeups for public consumption.

Raw JunoCam images from each close flyby, also known as perijove, are sent back to Earth for citizen scientists to process and enjoy. The Juno team had to wait until this week to start getting the data from last month’s perijove, due to a solar conjunction that temporarily blocked communications. But now the coast is clear, and processing is progressing.

As we wait for the next perijove on Dec. 16, let’s feast our eyes on these jewels from Jupiter:

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