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Jupiter From Below (nasa.gov)
125 points by _eric on Feb 10, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 23 comments



When I see amazing pictures such as these, I feel that it's just extraordinary how far we've come as a species in some regards, despite all the dark stuff going on.


I have been inspired by these images for years and have wanted one framed on my walls for a long time. After a nomadic few years of consulting I'm finally in a place where I was able to frame a few including the Earth Rise photo from Apollo and a really cool one of Saturn's rings.

[shameless plug] In the process of picking out the ones I wanted I thought others might be interested as well, so I created https://OMGSpaceIsAwesome.com - Awesome Framed Art of Space.

While it would obviously be beneficial to me if you purchased one through my site, I would be just as happy if my site inspired you to do it on your own. If you are in the U.S. you are probably close to a Michael's, which does custom framing (albeit they can be expensive) and there are a plethora of places where you can get the images printed before framing.

EDIT: New login because my previous one was tied to a former employer and apparently I haven't posted in a while!


Nice! :) I live in Brazil, though, so it would get pretty expensive if I purchased from it, unfortunately. But cool idea!


Thanks!

Unfortunately that's a limitation of the custom framer I'm using :/ I'm sure you could find a framer down there and do it yourself though. If you think they look cool on your computer screen they look amazing blown up on your wall!


Why would someone go to a Michael's when there's no shortage of independent framing shops pretty much everywhere?


For me this one from the Saturn's north pole is more amazing:

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/saturn/hexagon-in-motion...

Nobody could have expected a hexagon made from the clouds there, each side longer than the diameter of the Earth.

It even changes its color:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21049/changing-col...

And regarding the darkness, consider that the humanity in around 100 years used up what is estimated as the half of all the oil reserves on Earth that needed many millions of years to form.


It would be really cool to see what's the weather like on Uranus or Neptune, too - especially around the poles. Voyager pictures only provide a limited view.

> And regarding the darkness, consider that the humanity in around 100 years used up what is estimated as the half of all the oil reserves on Earth that needed many millions of years to form.

Not only that but coal, copper, iron, gold, uranium, rare earths, methane and helium are also nearly half depleted, or will be in a few decades given current usage.

Add the sad state of the environment to that, with ~75% of animal species gone extinct in the last century or two, agricultural depletion of the soil, increasing freshwater scarcity and climate change, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.


Hexagons are surprisingly common in nature! Honeycomb, columnar basalt, snowflakes, benzene, soap bubbles...


This video echos what you said : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I16TJUp4SVA


For comparison, this is one of the original Juno images:

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/Vault/VaultOutput?VaultID=6...


Shows the importance of a visible light camera, even if not essential to the mission


I wonder how big are those swirls compared to the size of earth


Earth's diameter is roughly 1/12 that of Jupiter, so it's easy to imagine that.



There's a tiny blue dot on the bottom left part inside the planet. Is that one of Jupiter's moons?

Checkout the JunoCam page for more images: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?featured...


Don't think so. There's a similar coloured dot around about the "10 o'clock" position near a white cloud.

Probably a digital artifact, and/or possibly from high-energy particle.

Edit - also the uniform turquoise colour is not very much like any known Jupiter moons. Io is sulphurous and most others are shades of grey. Titan around Saturn is one of the rare moons with a thick and colourful atmosphere.


It's not in this image[0] which, judging from the PIA number, is either the same or a very close one (temporaly).

My guess: since the one I linked has other colouring artifacts (because Juno rotates, and the camera is a luminance sensor with filter wheels for colours), the thing you spotted is probably an artifact that ocurred when trying to better align the colour channels.

[0] https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pi...

Edit: in the top left region of Jupiters disc there are other, similar artifacts to the one you pointed out, which are missing from the "natural colour" image.


The blue dot is more likely an artifact of the post-processing. On the NASA's version of the image [1] you can't see it.

[1] https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?id=636


Could just be from radiation, next to Jupiter is full of 'unpleasantness'.


Jupiter's axial tilt is only 3 degrees, so it's difficult to get a good photo of the poles regardless of the Jovian season. They will pretty much always be on the terminator (edge of shadow).


This is awesome. Just a reminder - there is no "below" in space, as there's no up or down. :p.


"The enemy's gate is down!"


aka planetary porn




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