NASA sent the spacecraft Juno to Jupiter in 2011. It took a bit for Juno to get there -- but it delivered.
Juno traveled for years, not reaching Jupiter until July 2016. The spacecraft was launched and, therefore, scientists could study the planet's composition and evolution, and they were excited by what they discovered. Jupiter is the 5th planet from the Sun and is the biggest planet in the solar system.
"The general theme of our discoveries is really how different Jupiter looked from how we expected," stated Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator, from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, when the first pictures were revealed in May 2018. "This is a close-up and personal look at Jupiter. We thought it was uniform inside and relatively boring. What we're finding is anything but that. "
According to NASA, the water-colored swirls in this picture are clouds in Jupiter's North North Temperate Belt.
And like clouds over here on Earth, people are searching for shapes within them.
NASA got the game going.
A Dragon’s Eye?
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) November 9, 2018
What do you see within the swirling clouds of Jupiter? https://t.co/TjIOUFJ2CC
📸: @NASAJuno pic.twitter.com/45RMgQ6d3u
However, others were quick to follow suit with observations ranging from a squid to a bird.
I see a Squid. pic.twitter.com/BO0Wy4eF4c
— 🌊 Noel Blaney 🌊 (@LividLFC) November 9, 2018
Bird pic.twitter.com/7cNjHfePoK
— Dan Wittman (@DanWittman1) November 13, 2018
So long and thanks for all the fish! 🐬
— NASA's Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) November 30, 2018
A cloud in the shape of a dolphin appears to be swimming through #Jupiter’s cloud bands in this series of color-enhanced images https://t.co/qo3SBTiMvI pic.twitter.com/sRY4bgwThN
NASA said that December 21, 2018, will mark the halfway point of the data collection of Juno's prime mission. So hopefully more exciting images are on the way, and perhaps lazy Sundays of the future will take cloud gazing from the park to outer space.
References: YouTube, edition.CNN
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