
NASA has released the first images from its Juno probe's historic flyby of the the biggest storm in the universe - Jupiter's 'Great Red Spot.'

The probe, which has been monitoring Jupiter's surface for just over a year, passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometres) above the Great Red Spot.

Today, the first three unprocessed 'raw' images were revealed by NASA as a taste of the images to come, and space enthusiasts soon tweaked them to produce these stunning images.

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This is an early processed version of an image created by Gerald Eichstädt, using NASA's raw data. It gives an unprecedented glimpse into the gigantic red spot of Jupiter.

'Raw images from the Juno spacecraft's flyby of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot are back on Earth,' NASA said as it revealed the images.

'We invite the public to act as a virtual imaging team, from identifying features of interest to sharing the finished images online.'

NASA is currently processing the images itself, and more are expected to be unveiled over the coming days.

'After JunoCam data arrives on Earth, members of the public can process the images to create color pictures,' it said.

'The public also helps determine which points on the planet will be photographed.'

Experts have predict that the views of the storm will be breathtaking.

The data collection of the Great Red Spot is part of Juno's sixth flyby over Jupiter's mysterious cloud tops.

Perijove (the point at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter's center) was this morning at 02:55 BST (21:55 EDT yesterday evening).

At the time of perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops.

Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno covered another 24,713 miles (39,771 kilometers) and was directly above the Great Red Spot.

The spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds.

All eight of the spacecraft's instruments as well as its imager, JunoCam, were on during the flyby.

Another of Jason Major's processed images, showing the cloud detail inside the gigantic storm (right).

Tom Momary posted this version of the image, titled 'Peering into the Great Red Spot...color enhancements and vibrance, to bring out detail'

'My latest Jupiter flyby is complete!' said a post on the @NASAJuno Twitter account.

'All science instruments and JunoCam were operating to collect data.'

'Raw images will be posted in (the) coming days,' the space agency said.

Juno launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and has been orbiting Jupiter for just over one year.

The data collection of the Great Red Spot was part of Juno's sixth flyby over Jupiter's mysterious cloud tops.

Perijove (the point at which an orbit comes closest to Jupiter's centre) was this morning at 02:55 BST (21:55 EDT yesterday evening).

At the time of perijove, Juno was about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops.

Although NASA posted the 'raw' files online (see below) internet users soon enhanced them. This image was posted by Jason Major, who tweeted 'They're here! My first processed raw map-projected image of #Jupiter's Great Red Spot from @NASAJuno's P7 flyover on July 10-11 #GRSflyover'

Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, Juno covered another 24,713 miles (39,771 kilometers) and was directly above the Great Red Spot.

The spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds.

All eight of the spacecraft's instruments as well as its imager, JunoCam, were on during the flyby.

The three raw images posted by NASA. It said it was hoping the public would 'act as a virtual imaging team, from identifying features of interest'. The so-called 'Great Red Spot' is a violent storm, which in the late 1800s was estimated to be about 25,000 miles (about 40,000 km) in diameter – wide enough for three Earths to fit side by side. The biggest in the solar system, it appears as a deep red orb surrounded by layers of pale yellow, orange and white. Winds inside the storm have been measured at several hundreds of miles per hour, NASA astronomers said.

The fly-by comes just days after Juno celebrated its first anniversary in Jupiter's orbit.

'Jupiter's mysterious Great Red Spot is probably the best-known feature of Jupiter,' said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

'This monumental storm has raged on the solar system's biggest planet for centuries.

'Now, Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special.'

Trapped between two jet streams, the Great Red Spot is an anticyclone swirling around a centre of high atmospheric pressure that makes it rotate in the opposite sense of hurricanes on Earth. Nasa's Juno spacecraft passed about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds

On July 4, Juno logged exactly one year in Jupiter orbit, and has chalked up about 71 million miles (114.5 million kilometers) in orbit around the giant planet.

'The success of science collection at Jupiter is a testament to the dedication, creativity and technical abilities of the Nasa-Juno team,' said Rick Nybakken, project manager for Juno from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

'Each new orbit brings us closer to the heart of Jupiter's radiation belt, but so far the spacecraft has weathered the storm of electrons surrounding Jupiter better than we could have ever imagined.'

WHAT WILL THE IMAGES SHOW? Speaking to Business Insider, Candice Hansen, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute said: 'The closest, most detailed image that JunoCam will return of the Great Red Spot is expected to show more than half of the [storm].' Ms Hansen suggests that the Great Red Spot should fill most of the frame, although its eastern and western limbs will be cropped out. As Juno retreats away from Jupiter's surface, its more distant images should show the entire storm - although this won't be in great detail. And once all of Juno's raw photo data is processed and verified, it will be stitched together as a giant mosaic image. This will be the most detailed image of the Great Red Spot yet. Advertisement

During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planet's cloud tops - as close as about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers).

During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Early results from Nasa's Juno mission portray the largest planet in our solar system as a turbulent world, with an intriguingly complex interior structure, energetic polar aurora, and huge polar cyclones.

The image of a crescent Jupiter and the iconic Great Red Spot was created by a citizen scientist (Roman Tkachenko) using data from Juno's JunoCam instrument, Nasa said.

The stunning image reveals the iconic great red spot, alongside a series of storms shaped like white ovals, known informally as the 'string of pearls'. It was taken on December 11, 2016 as the Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter

WHAT IS THE GREAT RED SPOT? The so-called 'Great Red Spot' is a violent storm, which in the late 1800s was estimated to be about 25,000 miles (about 40,000 km) in diameter – wide enough for three Earths to fit side by side. The biggest in the solar system, it appears as a deep red orb surrounded by layers of pale yellow, orange and white. Winds inside the storm have been measured at several hundreds of miles per hour, Nasa astronomers said. Advertisement

The image was taken on December 11, 2016 as the Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter.

At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 285,100 miles (458,800 kilometers) from the planet.

Astronomers recently revealed that Jupiter's 'red spot' storm, the biggest in the solar system, is shrinking.

The so-called 'Great Red Spot' is a violent storm, which in the late 1800s was estimated to be about 25,000 miles (about 40,000 km) in diameter – wide enough for three Earths to fit side by side.

The biggest in the solar system, it appears as a deep red orb surrounded by layers of pale yellow, orange and white.

Winds inside the storm have been measured at several hundreds of miles per hour, Nasa astronomers said.

Nasa revealed the find alongside stunning new maps of the planet which are the first in an annual series of 'weather maps' designed to spot changes.

Already, the Jupiter images have revealed a rare wave just north of the planet's equator and a unique filamentary feature in the core of the Great Red Spot not seen previously.

The movement of Jupiter's clouds can be seen by comparing the first map to the second one. Zooming in on the Great Red Spot at blue (left) and red (right) wavelengths reveals a unique filamentary feature not previously seen (Credits: Nasa/ESA/Goddard/UCBerkeley/JPL-Caltech/STScI)

HOW DID JUNO TAKE THE IMAGES? Juno's main camera, JunoCam, captured images of the Great Red Spot, and will send them back to Earth by July 14, according to Scott Bolton, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and the Juno mission's leader. Mr Bolton said: 'Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special.' But taking images of the Great Red Spot isn't as simple as pointing and shooting. To capture the storm in detail, Juno must fly close to the storm - around 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the Giant Red Spot clouds. Juno also flies at staggering speeds of 34 miles/second making taking steady photos a challenge. Advertisement

'Every time we look at Jupiter, we get tantalizing hints that something really exciting is going on,' said Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

'This time is no exception.'

Collecting these yearly images will help current and future scientists see how these giant worlds change over time.

This sequence of enhanced-color images shows how quickly the viewing geometry changes for Nasa's Juno spacecraft as it swoops by Jupiter. The images were obtained by JunoCam. Once every 53 days the Juno spacecraft swings close to Jupiter, speeding over its clouds

The observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry.

Ms Simon and her colleagues produced two global maps of Jupiter from observations made using Hubble's high-performance Wide Field Camera 3.

The two maps represent nearly back-to-back rotations of the planet, making it possible to determine the speeds of Jupiter's winds.

The new images confirm that the Great Red Spot continues to shrink and become more circular, as it has been doing for years.

The long axis of this characteristic storm is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) shorter now than it was in 2014.

Recently, the storm had been shrinking at a faster-than-usual rate, but the latest change is consistent with the long-term trend.

The Great Red Spot remains more orange than red these days, and its core, which typically has more intense color, is less distinct than it used to be.

An unusual wispy filament is seen, spanning almost the entire width of the vortex.

This filamentary streamer rotates and twists throughout the 10-hour span of the Great Red Spot image sequence, getting distorted by winds blowing at 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second) or even greater speeds.

In Jupiter's North Equatorial Belt, the researchers found an elusive wave that had been spotted on the planet only once before, decades earlier, by Voyager 2.

NASA'S JUNO MISSION The Juno probe reached Jupiter last year after a five-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey from Earth. Following a successful braking manoeuvre, it has now entered into a long polar orbit flying to within 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of the planet's swirling cloud tops. The probe will skim to within just 4,200 km of the planet's clouds once a fortnight - too close to provide global coverage in a single image. No previous spacecraft has orbited so close to Jupiter, although two others have been sent plunging to their destruction through its atmosphere. To complete its risky mission Juno will have to survive a circuit-frying radiation storm generated by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field. The maelstrom of high energy particles travelling at nearly the speed of light is the harshest radiation environment in the Solar System. To cope with the conditions, the spacecraft is protected with special radiation-hardened wiring and sensor shielding. Its all-important 'brain' - the spacecraft's flight computer - is housed in an armoured vault made of titanium and weighing almost 400 pounds (172kg). Juno is in a harsh radiation environment, so its delicate electronics are housed in a special titanium vault. Eventually, Juno will succumb to the intense radiation and will be commanded to plunge into Jupiter's atmosphere to avoid any collision with the planet's moons. Pictured is a 1/5 scale model size of the solar-powered Juno spacecraft Advertisement

In those images, the wave is barely visible, and nothing like it was seen again, until the current wave was found traveling at about 16 degrees north latitude, in a region dotted with cyclones and anticyclones.

Similar waves – called baroclinic waves – sometimes appear in Earth's atmosphere where cyclones are forming.

'Until now, we thought the wave seen by Voyager 2 might have been a fluke,' said co-author Glenn Orton of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

'As it turns out, it's just rare!'

The wave may originate in a clear layer beneath the clouds, only becoming visible when it propagates up into the cloud deck, according to the researchers.