NASA shares image of red cyclones swirling on Jupiter’s North Pole – but the internet says the planet looks like a ‘pepperoni pizza’
- NASA shared an image captured by Juno of cyclones swirling on Jupiter
- The image shows swirls of red and yellow at the planet’s North Pole
- The agency shared it on Instagram and users compared it to a pepperoni pizza
NASA shared a detailed image of Jupiter, but viewers said it looks more like ‘a pepperoni pizza.’
The Juno spacecraft has been probing the massive planet since 2011 and recently sent back a picture red swirling cyclones in the North Pole region.
The American space agency shared the image on Instagram and users responded by comparing the features to the popular food.
One user called it the ‘Pizza Planet,’ while another said it looked like a burnt pie.
However, the infrared photo highlights ‘lava-like’ storms on Jupiter’s poles and when viewed under visible light, the clouds appear as a blue glow.
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NASA shared a detailed image of Jupiter, but viewers said it looks more like ‘a pepperoni pizza.’ The Juno spacecraft has been probing the massive planet since 2011 and recently sent back a picture red swirling cyclones in the North Pole region
Juno has been NASA’s eyes while orbiting Jupiter, but the agency is set to employ the powerful James Webb Space Telescope that will observe the planet with the hopes of making more detailed discoveries.
Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley and Thierry Fouchet of the Observatory de Paris, said: ‘It will be a really challenging experiment.’
‘Jupiter is so bright, and Webb’s instruments are so sensitive, that observing both the bright planet and its fainter rings and moons will be an excellent test of how to get the most out of Webb’s innovative technology.’
NASA recently shared an image of fierce storms circling Jupiter’s poles.
‘The floor is lava,’ NASA shared in the Instagram post. ‘Oh wait, never mind, that’s just an infrared look at Jupiter’s North Pole.’
The American space agency shared the image on Instagram and users responded by comparing the features to the popular food. One user called it the ‘Pizza Planet,’ while another said it looked like a burnt pie
Our James Webb Space Telescope will examine the atmosphere of Jupiter’s polar region, where @NASAJuno discovered the clusters of cyclones seen in this image. @NASAWebb’s data will provide much more detail than has been possible in past observations, measuring winds, cloud particles, gas composition, and temperature.’
Moments after the image surfaced, users came flocking to leave a comment noting the image looks like pizza.
One user wrote it is the ‘Forbidden pizza’ and a number of users just replied to the image with the pizza emoji.
The infrared photo highlights ‘lava-like’ storms on Jupiter’s poles and when viewed under visible light, the clouds appear as a blue glow
NASA shared an image of the storms under visible light, which shows Jupiter’s North Pole with a bluish color and traces of storm clouds swirling around in the atmosphere.
Scott Bolton, the principal investigator for the Juno spacecraft, said in a statement: ‘It’s bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms.’
‘There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to — this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter.’
‘We’re seeing signs that the clouds have shadows, possibly indicating that the clouds are at a higher altitude than other features.
WHAT IS THE JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE?
The James Webb telescope has been described as a ‘time machine’ that could help unravel the secrets of our universe.
The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
The vast telescope, which has already cost more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope
The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of roughly 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).
Officials say the cost may exceed the $8 billion (£5.6 billion) program cap set by Congress. The space agency has already poured $7 billion (£5 billion) into the telescope.
When it is launched in 2020, it will be the world’s biggest and most powerful telescope, capable of peering back 200 million years after the Big Bang.
In January the telescope had been successfully tested in a giant vacuum chamber at the Johnson Space Centre – proving it will function in deep space.
The telescope went through 100 days of cryogenic testing where temperatures dipped hundreds of degrees below the freezing point to ensure it functioned in extreme cold.
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