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NASA's Dramatic New Image Of Jupiter's 'Little Red Spot' Is Incredible

This monster storm has been raging for 25 years.

NASA has shared yet another absolutely stunning picture of Jupiter taken by the Juno spacecraft that’s currently in orbit.

The image, enhanced by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran, shows a 3,700km long storm known as the North North Temperate Little Red Spot 1.

NASA

What makes the image so special isn’t just the location, it’s the clarity of the image.

While high-resolution images of Jupiter have been taken before, it’s rare to see one that so accurately captures even the smallest details.

Jupiter’s ‘Little Red Spot’ has been tracked by scientists since 1993 and is what’s known as an anticyclone.

As explained by NASA, an anticyclone is a weather phenomenon where winds around the storm flow in the direction opposite to that of the flow around a region of low pressure.

While the perspective suggests that you’re looking upwards at Jupiter’s north pole the image has in fact been rotated so that the top of the image shows the south pole instead.

The image itself was taken on the 10 July during Juno’s seventh close flyby of the gas giant reaching a minimum distance of just 11,444 kilometers from the tops of the clouds.

Due to the enormous radiation surrounding the planet Juno’s close flybys are in fact doing enormous damage to the spacecraft.

Jupiter’s magnetosphere is the largest in the solar system which means that the radiation belts are 18,000 times stronger than those found surrounding Earth.

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