New Delhi: NASA's Juno spacecraft has released the first look of Jupiter's polar regions during its maiden flyby of the planet.
Juno snapped images on August 27 when the spacecraft came about 2,500 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter’s swirling clouds. “First glimpse of Jupiter’s north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio in a statement.
The Juno mission was first initiated in August 2011 and it reached Jupiter nearly five years later on July 4, 2016. This is the first opportunity for Juno team to capture the detailed close-up pictures of Jupiter with the suite of its eight scientific instruments switched on.
According to NASA, along with JunoCam, the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), supplied by the Italian Space Agency, also acquired some remarkable images of Jupiter at its north and south polar regions in infrared wavelengths.
The infrared views reveals the warm and hot spots of the planet that the world had never seen before.
Check out the stunning images of Jupiter's wild north pole and bright southern lights here:
Jupiter’s Southern Lights! Infrared of southern aurora of Jupiter, captured by @NASAJuno: https://t.co/sZYPdE8dHF pic.twitter.com/D1smgbmNTw
— NASA (@NASA) September 2, 2016
A whole new world. My 1st glimpse of #Jupiter’s north pole looks unlike anything seen before https://t.co/OODrfqlCag pic.twitter.com/ghTlibdxaV
— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) September 2, 2016
