NASA Juno Spacecraft Captured These Amazing Images Of Jupiter

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been busy this month, snapping images of both Jupiter and its moon lo. Juno was first launched in 2011. It reached Jupiter in 2016, and has since been gathering data on the giant gas planet and its moons.

The Juno spacecraft has been fascinating NASA scientists and astronomers back on Earth with incredible images of Jupiter’s moon lo since December 30, 2023. The late December flyby, and another on February 3, 2024, have provided astonishing images of what NASA considers to be the most volcanically active body in the entire solar system. During this time, however, the spacecraft has also snapped a few enticing images of Jupiter.


Both the image at the top of this article, and the one above, are part of what NASA refers to as the PJ58 #21 flyby of Juno. According to NASA, the top image was calibrated using a custom python script for dark subtraction and flatfield correction. The strips of Jupiter were then projected using Kevin Gill’s junocam_processing software. Further calibration of the image were then conducted, which included correcting the colors within a dE of 2 using the pre launch spectral sensitivities of JunoCam.


An image of Jupiter’s moon lo (seen above) was also shared via X by Thomas Thomopoulos, highlighting a view of plumes projecting out from the surface of the moon. Thomopoulos remarked in the tweet that the image was “processed by image by Gerald - Framing, enlarging the area, processing the image to bring out the colors on the ground and get a view of the plumes.”

Juno’s mission is that of studying gas giants in order to understand the solar system’s history and the formation of planetary systems elsewhere in the Universe. Scientists and astronomers are hopeful that by studying Jupiter and its moons, they will gain knowledge of the fundamental processes that helped shape the early solar system. The recent images of Jupiter and lo will provide more information in that journey.