• Home
  • Science
  • Science News
  • ‘How About Interplanetary Pizza Day?’ NASA’s Juno Mission Saw ‘Pepperoni’ Storms on Jupiter’s North Pole

‘How About Interplanetary Pizza Day?’ NASA’s Juno Mission Saw ‘Pepperoni’ Storms on Jupiter’s North Pole

NASA also added a few ‘spicy details’ to explain the occurrence in the video.

‘How About Interplanetary Pizza Day?’ NASA’s Juno Mission Saw ‘Pepperoni’ Storms on Jupiter’s North Pole

Photo Credit: NASA/JPL- Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

The images were captured during Juno's fourth pass over Jupiter

Highlights
  • Jupiter storms resemble red pepperoni on a pizza
  • It is an infrared image of the north pole of the planet
  • That's how the colouration in the video was achieved
Advertisement

NASA's Juno mission has spotted “pepperoni” storms on Jupiter. The space agency released the news on National Pizza Day, making the Jupiter storms all the more interesting for us. NASA released a video of the north pole of the giant planet on its Instagram handle. There we can see a dense formation of storms in red and yellow hues. NASA explained the colour of the storms and the occurrence in the caption. Adding quirk to the post, the space agency wrote, “National Pizza Day? How about Interplanetary Pizza Day? Our Juno mission saw ‘pepperoni' storms topping Jupiter.”

Indeed, the storms resemble the red pepperoni on a pizza. But there's more to it than meets the eye. The image is not a regular photograph. It is an infrared image of the north pole of Jupiter. That's how the colouration in the video was achieved.

The caption added: “The movie utilises imagery derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) up instrument aboard our NASA Solar System Exploration mission Juno.”

The caption also explained the significance of the yellow and red gradients. The areas shown in yellow are deeper into Jupiter's atmosphere and hence, are warmer. The red regions are higher in Jupiter's atmosphere and depict colder areas.

The image was captured to depict “brightness temperature”, which is “a measurement of the radiance, at 5um, travelling upward from the top of the atmosphere towards Juno”. The brightness temperature is expressed in units of temperature, the highest being 260K (about -13 degrees Celsius) and the lowest being around 190K (about -83 degrees Celsius).

The images were captured during Juno's fourth pass over Jupiter on February 2, 2017.

The 14-second video has garnered over seven lakh views till now.

Here is the video released by NASA:

NASA regularly shares stunning images of outer space on its official Instagram page. Often, the space agency collects data from multiple telescopes and observatories in order to bring to us mind-boggling pictures of galaxies and stars. Recently, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope released an image of a group of three galaxies, about 425 million light-years from the Earth. In the image, the three galaxies seem to be interacting with each other. From the image, NASA stated, it appeared that the two galaxies on the upper right look like a starship known as the USS Enterprise from the American science fiction media franchise Star Trek.


Are Oppo's new flagship phones any good? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.
Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.

Further reading: NASA, Jupiter, Juno
2022 Beijing Olympics: Alibaba Creates Virtual Idol to Promote Merchandise
The Fame Game Trailer: Madhuri Dixit Goes Missing, Family Comes Under the Scanner in New Netflix Series Out February 25
Facebook Gadgets360 Twitter Share Tweet Snapchat LinkedIn Reddit Comment google-newsGoogle News

Advertisement

Follow Us
© Copyright Red Pixels Ventures Limited 2024. All rights reserved.
Trending Products »
Latest Tech News »