• Photographs were taken at a remarkable 2,09,000 kilometres per hour relative to Jupiter.
• Nasa shared two photos created by citizen scientist Björn Jónsson.
• The camera captured the planet in stunning detail.

The Juno spacecraft, which is now orbiting Jupiter, has returned new data that depicts a riot of colours on the solar system’s largest planet. The photographs were taken during the probe’s 43rd near flyby of the big planet earlier this year, when it watched it from a close distance.

Nasa shared two photos created by citizen scientist Björn Jónsson using raw data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam instrument. The photographs were taken at a latitude of around 50 degrees, 5,300 kilometres above Jupiter’s cloud tops.

While travelling at a remarkable 2,09,000 kilometres per hour relative to Jupiter, the camera captured the planet in stunning detail.

The first image depicts the approximate colours that the human eye would see from Juno’s perspective point, while the second image was created using the same raw data that Björn Jónsson digitally altered in order to improve both colour saturation and contrast in order to sharpen small-scale features.

The digitally treated image has less compression artefacts and noise than raw photographs, displaying some of Jupiter’s most intriguing elements of its atmosphere.

The images depict colour changes caused by different chemical compositions, the three-dimensional aspect of Jupiter’s swirling vortices, and little, dazzling “pop-up” clouds that occur in the upper atmosphere.

Juno sent a timelapse of the planet coming into view in June after a flyby in April this year. Andrea Luck, another citizen scientist, edited and animated a series of photos obtained by the JunoCam sensor as the planet came into view.

The spacecraft was successful in scanning the planet’s length and breadth, and in 2020 it observed an asteroid streaking through the planet’s upper atmosphere. According to information given last year, the object that collided with Jupiter weighed between 250 and 5000 kg.

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