This image of Jupiter's southern hemisphere was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed a close flyby of the gas giant planet on Dec. 16, 2017.
Juno captured this color-enhanced image at 10:24 a.m. PST (1:24 p.m. EST) when the spacecraft was about 19,244 miles (30,970 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter's clouds at a latitude of 49.9 degrees south -- roughly halfway between the planet's equator and its south pole. Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.
JunoCam's raw images are available at www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam for the public to peruse and process into image products.
More information about Juno is online at http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.