Duarte Garrido, News Reporter

Jupiter has lined up with the Sun and Earth, appearing brighter and closer than usual, and allowing NASA to capture a stunning new photo.

At a distance of 415 million miles, the planet, known as a gas giant, was closer to the Earth than at any other time during the year.

Image: NASA's Hubble Telescope is responsible for the stunning new photos

The phenomenon is known as being in "opposition", positioned directly opposite the Sun from the Earth.


It meant the Earth was sitting between the Sun and the gas giant.

This rare positioning allowed NASA to photograph Jupiter in exquisite detail, using the famous Hubble telescope and its wide field camera.

So what can we see?

Image: The famous Great Red Spot on Jupiter

Jupiter is best known for the Great Red Spot, an anticyclone that has raged for at least 150 years.

This famous storm is larger than Earth, but has slowly been shrinking since the 1800s for reasons unknown.

VIDEO: NASA explains Jupiter's 'opposition'

The Hubble has been a key agent in observing the Great Red Spot, so NASA can further understand its shrinkage.

These observations are part of NASA's Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy programme or OPAL, which provides global views of outer planets to look for changes in weather.

Image: Planet Jupiter is a gas planet, primarily composed of hydrogen

With its immense and powerful storms and hundreds of smaller vortices, the atmosphere of Jupiter is divided into several distinct, colourful bands, parallel to the equator.

These bands, with alternating wind motions, are created by differences in the thickness and height, with the lighter bands rising higher and with thicker clouds than the darker bands.

Image: Jupiter's biggest moon, Ganymede, has got an underground salt ocean

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun, and the largest in our solar system, with two and a half times the mass of all other solar planets combined.

Its four largest moons are called Galilean satellites and consist of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.