Pop-up clouds on Jupiter
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo above was cropped and enhanced by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt from a raw Juno image taken during that spacecraft’s 37th orbit. I have reduced it slightly to post here.
The photo shows what he calls “pop-up” clouds floating above a much larger cloud eddy. Unfortunately, Eichstädt provides no scale, but I suspect this image would easily cover the Earth, with those white clouds probably far larger than the biggest hurricane on Earth.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo above was cropped and enhanced by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt from a raw Juno image taken during that spacecraft’s 37th orbit. I have reduced it slightly to post here.
The photo shows what he calls “pop-up” clouds floating above a much larger cloud eddy. Unfortunately, Eichstädt provides no scale, but I suspect this image would easily cover the Earth, with those white clouds probably far larger than the biggest hurricane on Earth.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Hi Robert,
Thanks for choosing this PJ37 image!
Here a statement which is neither peer-reviewed nor cross-checked. So, consider it my preliminary and unofficial opinion:
I would estimate the horizontal extent of the image to cover about 4,000 km. I retrieved the estimate from a north polar azimuthal map I’ve rendered in the meanwhile. Don’t nail me down to the exact value. The view is somewhat oblique. So the vertical and the horizontal scale aren’t quite the same.
We don’t know yet the accurate true nature of those cumulus-like “pop-up” clouds. Therefore that informal name. But I’m pretty sure that they are a result of local upwelling. Earth-analogs could be any cumulus-type cloud ranging from cirrocumulus to hailstorms. This remains subject to further investigation. Interestingly, in this case, they are on-top of those huge and very turbulent storm systems.
According to the metadata of the image (PJ37 image #034), it was taken from an altitude of 3,288.4 km above Jupiter’s cloud tops, or let’s better say above its IAU 1-bar level. The nominal subspacecraft position was 27.1129°N, 47.1482°E, planetocentric L3. Due to the high velocity of the spacecraft near perijove, the framelets the image is recontructed from are actually taken from different points along Juno’s trajectory.
Despite the image being cropped to a horizontal field of view of about 39°, the oblique pointing towards Jupiter ends up with covering roughly 4,000 km. The nearby horizon in the full image is located left of the cropped area. So, the left side of the image is more condensed than the right one.
Gerald: Thank you for the comment. If you search my website for your name you will see that I have featured quite a number of your Juno enhanced shots.
Now that I have your email address, I will email you next time I want to post one.
Thank you, Robert, for helping to promote the Juno project!
From time to time, I search the web for my name, and happen to find your web site.
Often enough, there is only few time to find out additional information about an image and to prepare a detailed caption for the images I post. But sometimes, I may be able to provide information beyond the caption on the missionjuno website.
There will likely be times I’m too busy to check my emails.
In that case or if my response via email takes too long, just post your article the way you used to in the past.