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PIA21030: Closing in on Jupiter's North Pole
As NASA's Juno spacecraft closed in on Jupiter for its Aug. 27, 2016 pass, its view grew sharper and fine details in the north polar region became increasingly visible.
 Target Name:  Jupiter
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Juno 
 Spacecraft:  Juno
 Instrument:  JunoCam 
 Product Size:  1200 x 1200 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  SwRI 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA21030.tif (1.514 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA21030.jpg (44.15 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

As NASA's Juno spacecraft closed in on Jupiter for its Aug. 27, 2016 pass, its view grew sharper and fine details in the north polar region became increasingly visible.

The JunoCam instrument obtained this view on August 27, about two hours before closest approach, when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (195,000 kilometers) away from the giant planet (i.e., for Jupiter's center).

Unlike the equatorial region's familiar structure of belts and zones, the poles are mottled with rotating storms of various sizes, similar to giant versions of terrestrial hurricanes. Jupiter's poles have not been seen from this perspective since the Pioneer 11 spacecraft flew by the planet in 1974.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

More information about Juno is online at http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Image Addition Date:
2016-09-02