NASA's Juno Spacecraft Captured Never-Before-Seen Photos Of Jupiter's Surface & They're Epic

Ever since its sendoff in 2011, NASA¡¯s Juno spacecraft has been gracing us with spectacular images of our solar system. Now, six years after its launch, it¡¯s managed to send us the first closeup images of a strange feature of our solar system's resident gas giant, Jupiter.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Roman Tkachenko

The JunoCam captured a series of images on February 2, when the spacecraft was orbiting approximately 14,500 km above Jupiter¡¯s surface. The stunning enhance-colour images show a dark spot on the planet¡¯s surface, the likes of which we¡¯ve never seen in such detail before.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

According to NASA, the stain is a storm named ¡®Dark Spot¡¯, and was targeted by a public vote of JunoCam¡¯s online community of space enthusiasts. Citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko colourised the image, though the raw captures are available on the JunoCam website.

Scientists still don¡¯t know a lot about Dark Spot, but it¡¯s likely to be a storm of extreme measure. Jupiter is known to feature violent, unpredictable storms that can extend up to thousands of kilometres in diameter and continue to roar across the surface for decades.

NASA/JPL-Caltech - Behold the dark side of the Jupiter!

Juno is part of NASA¡¯s mission to study these very same storms and what causes them. In the meantime, we can gaze at nature¡¯s fury and thank our stars we¡¯re habituated on one of the milder planets on our system.