NASA Hubble Telescope Chronicles Jupiter In Stunning Detail

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has unraveled the beauty of Jupiter's clouds in a new image captured by its Wide Field Camera 3. It is said that the planet was 644 million km from the Earth, which is the closest distance ever this year. Notably, this image was captured on June 27, 2019.

The image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope shows that Jupiter is the most beautiful planet in the solar system. It shows more intense colors than the images we have seen before. It also shows the intricate and dramatic cloud formations that move in bands, giving a striped appearance to the planet.

The bands of clouds move in various directions due to the thickness of ammonia ice clouds. The darker bands in the image show areas with thinner clouds while the lighter bands show areas with relatively thicker clouds.

New Feature Spotted

Well, Jupiter's new image also shows the remarkable feature never seen before beneath the Red Eye. It is a thin and long brown strip clearly seen in the image. It is a cyclone spinning in the opposite direction of the Eye. It is common for cyclones like this to appear on the planet at regular intervals.

Notably, the distinctive Eye to the left in the image is called Giant Red Spot. It is said to measure 10,000 miles (16,000 km) in width and 1.3 times the Earth's width. It has been monitored since 1830 and is said to exist for over three decades. The same has been shrinking for unknown reasons. It is also known to be the largest storm in the solar system. Also, it remains to be known why this eye is reddish-brown in color while other storms on Jupiter are of white or brown color.

NASA's Europa Clipper Spacecraft

In 2023, NASA plans to launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will study the potentially habitable moon Europa. This is one of the two probes slated to visit the gas giant in the coming years. The other probe is the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), which will be launched in 2022 to study Europa, Callisto and Ganymede satellites.