NASA’s Juno orbiter has captured stunning images of the swirling, hypnotic beauty of Jupiter in the three years it has been observing our solar system’s largest planet.
On Sept. 12, Juno sent back a scene from a close orbit of 8,000 kilometers. Data processed into a color image shows Jupiter’s moon Io casting a shadow over the planet.
While eclipses are commons for Jupiter, which has at least 67 known moons, the image stunningly showcases’s the planet’s massive scale. Io, roughly the same size at Earth’s moon, blocks out only a minor portion of Jupiter’s full surface area.
