
A new video stitching together over 2,000 still frames reconstructed from a recent flyover of Jupiter has revealed a breathtaking new look at the largest planet in our solar system.

In March, NASA’s Juno spacecraft conducted the Perijove 5 flyby, bringing it roughly 2,700 miles from Jupiter’s cloud tops.

Using dozens of observations from the JunoCam, a mathematician in Germany has created a stunning time-lapse video showing the planet from all angles – and, set to dramatic sci-fi music, the footage reveals the alien beauty of the massive gas giant.

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After uploading the timelapse to an online space forum, it was picked up by animator/filmmaker Seán Doran, who then smoothed it out and enhanced the frames, Wired reports. Doran also added otherworldly music from the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack. The breathtaking final product can be seen above

JUPITER'S CYCLONES Turning counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere just like on Earth, the cyclones are clearly clustered near the poles. The diameters of some of these cyclones stretch 870 miles (1,400 kilometers). Even bigger - though shapeless -weather systems are also present in both polar regions. But, the two poles don't really resemble each other, puzzling experts. Jupiter's poles appear dramatically different from neighboring Saturn's, according to the scientists, with nothing like the hexagon-shaped cloud system over Saturn's north pole. Advertisement

The video, originally created by mathematician Gerald Eichstaedt, took 60 hours to make, using 36 images from the JunoCam, according to Wired.

It reconstructs Juno’s flyby from the perspective of the spacecraft, using the PJ-05 images and SPICE trajectory data, the creator explains on YouTube.

The final product, using 2,703 still frames in all, is a 125-fold time-lapse compared to real time.

The remarkable video shows a look at some of the massive planet’s most striking features, including its chaotic cyclones that are up to 1,400 km (870 miles) across – roughly the length of Japan.

After uploading the timelapse to an online space forum, it was picked up by animator/filmmaker Seán Doran, who then smoothed it out and enhanced the frames, Wired reports.

Doran also added otherworldly music from the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack.

Just last week remarkable new images from the Juno spacecraft revealed new secrets about its atmosphere and interior that challenge previous assumptions about the giant gas planet.

The image shows Jupiter's south pole, as seen by NASA's Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection

The Juno mission, which launched in 2011 and began its first orbit last year, allows scientists to view Jupiter in new ways thanks to the probe's highly elliptical orbit, which passes over the planet's poles and dives within 5,000km (3,100 miles) of its cloud tops.

A NASA statement described the planet as 'a complex, gigantic, turbulent world' that is far different than scientists previously thought.

Two papers in the journal Science and 44 papers in Geophysical Research Letters describe a trove of discoveries made since Juno began orbiting Jupiter last year.

'We knew, going in, that Jupiter would throw us some curves,' said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

'There is so much going on here that we didn't expect that we have had to take a step back and begin to rethink of this as a whole new Jupiter.

The remarkable video shows a look at some of the massive planet’s most striking features. And, set to a dramatic sci-fi music, the footage reveals the alien beauty of the massive gas giant

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

Juno's findings are 'really going to force us to rethink not only how Jupiter works, but how do we explore Saturn, Uranus and Neptune,' Bolton added.

With dozens of cyclones hundreds of miles across - alongside unidentifiable weather systems stretching thousands of miles - the poles look nothing like Jupiter's equatorial region, instantly recognizable by its stripes and Great Red Spot, a raging hurricane-like storm.

'That's the Jupiter we've all known and grown to love,' Bolton said.

'And when you look from the pole, it looks totally different ... I don't think anybody would have guessed this is Jupiter.'

He calls these first major findings 'Earth-shattering. Or should I say, Jupiter-shattering.'

Remarkable new images from the Juno spacecraft have revealed new secrets about its atmosphere and interior that challenge previous assumptions about the giant gas planet

NASA'S JUNO MISSION Nasa's Juno spacecraft (pictured, a graphic representation) reached Jupiter last year after a five-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey from Earth 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

A look at Jupiter's poles has shown they are covered with dozens of densely clustered storms, possibly dropping hail or snow.

'Images of Jupiter's previously-unseen poles show a chaotic scene of bright oval features,' said one of the studies in the journal Science.

These ovals, it turns out, are huge swirling storms, some of which measure up to 870 miles (1,400 kilometers) across.

Researchers found 'signs of ammonia welling up from the deep atmosphere and forming giant weather systems.'

Now, more study is needed to better understand the nature of Jupiter's storms, and why the planet acts this way.

NASA's enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter shows a Jovian 'galaxy' of swirling storms in this image captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on February 2, 2017, at 5:13 a.m. PDT (8:13 a.m. EDT), at an altitude of 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops

A cylindrical map of the infrared emission from Jupiter as detected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), an instrument on the Juno spacecraft

Juno has also revealed data regarding Jupiter's swirling magnetic fields, which are up to ten times stronger than the magnetic forces acting on Earth.

This will help understand the structure of the planet's atmosphere and whether it has a solid core, as models have predicted.

Analysis of the gas giant's magnetic field reveals that close to the planet, the field greatly exceeded expectations - it is substantially stronger than models predicted, at 7.766 Gauss, or roughly ten times Earth's magnetic field.

'Juno is giving us a view of the magnetic field close to Jupiter that we've never had before,' said Jack Connerney, Juno deputy principal investigator and the lead for the mission's magnetic field investigation at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The image a swirling storm just south of one of the white oval storms on Jupiter. It was captured by the JunoCam on March 27, during the craft's close flyby

'Already we see that the magnetic field looks lumpy: it is stronger in some places and weaker in others.

'This uneven distribution suggests that the field might be generated by dynamo action closer to the surface, above the layer of metallic hydrogen.

'Every flyby we execute gets us closer to determining where and how Jupiter's dynamo works.'

Juno also is designed to study the polar magnetosphere and the origin of Jupiter's powerful auroras—its northern and southern lights.

These auroral emissions are caused by particles that pick up energy, slamming into atmospheric molecules.

Juno's initial observations indicate that the process seems to work differently at Jupiter than at Earth.

Juno is in a polar orbit around Jupiter, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the gas giant.

The complexity and richness of Jupiter's 'southern lights' are on display in this image of false-color maps from Nasa's Juno spacecraft

JunoCam colour composite images of the north and south polar regions of Jupiter obtained on August 27 2016. The north polar image was taken at 11:59 UT when the spacecraft was 73,009km (45,365 miles) from Jupiter's cloud deck; the south polar image was taken at 13:56 UT when the spacecraft was 95,096km (59,090 miles) from the cloud deck

But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a two-hour transit (from pole to pole) flying north to south with its eight science instruments collecting data and its JunoCam public outreach camera snapping pictures.

The download of six megabytes of data collected during the transit can take 1.5 days.

'Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian science, and there is always something new,' said Bolton.

'On our next flyby on July 11, we will fly directly over one of the most iconic features in the entire solar system -- one that every school kid knows - Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

'If anybody is going to get to the bottom of what is going on below those mammoth swirling crimson cloud tops, it's Juno and her cloud-piercing science instruments.'

The image reveals a look at the mysterious dark spot on Jupiter, showing what appears to be a ' enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter seems to reveal a 'Jovian galaxy' of swirling storms

In one study, researchers analysed results from Juno's flight just above the cloud tops.

Images of Jupiter's previously-unseen poles show a chaotic scene of bright oval features, very different from Saturn's polar regions.

A time-lapse of Juno images reveals that the ovals are cyclones, some of which reach diameters up to 1,400km (870 miles) across.

Juno measured the thermal structure of Jupiter's deep atmosphere as it passed over the cloud tops.

These data show unexpected structures, which the authors interpret as signs of ammonia welling up from the deep atmosphere and forming giant weather systems.

In a second study, researchers studied Jupiter's auroras and its magnetosphere, the region where the planet's magnetic field dominates over the solar wind.

In March 2017, NASA’s Juno spacecraft conducted the Perijove 5 flyby, bringing it roughly 2,700 miles from Jupiter’s cloud tops

Juno encountered the giant planet's bow shock, essentially a stationary shockwave, as it entered the magnetosphere on 24 June 2016.

Since the spacecraft only encountered one bow shock as it approached the planet, compared to multiple encounters on subsequent orbits, this suggests that the magnetosphere was expanding in size at the time, according to researchers.

Taking advantage of its unique perspective when positioned above the poles, Juno detected downward-travelling electron beams that shower energy into Jupiter's upper atmosphere, potentially powering the huge auroras that Juno saw in ultraviolet and infrared images.

Intriguingly these electron showers appear to have a different distribution from those that occur on Earth, suggesting a radically different conceptual model of Jupiter's interaction with its space environment, researchers said.

'The results from Juno's initial close passes of Jupiter are changing our understanding of this gas giant,' researchers from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, said in a scientific paper.

JUPITER'S GIANT AURORA Jupiter's auroras were first discovered by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1979. A thin ring of light on Jupiter's nightside looked like a stretched-out version of our own auroras on Earth. But later, astronomers discovered the auroras were best visible in the ultraviolet. Scientists also discovered the planet has X-ray aurora too. Jupiter's aurora are larger than our entire planet and unlike those on Earth, occur almost continuously. This suggests that the mechanism causing this light show is different from that on Earth. While Earth's Northern and Southern lights are triggered by energetic particles from the sun slamming into gas atoms high in the atmosphere, Jupiter appears to have another source. Scientists believe its powerful magnetic field accellerates charged particles from the space around it towards its poles, to cause similar interactions. The volcanic moon Io spews oxygen and sulfur ions into Jupiter's spinning magnetic field, which sends them hurtling towards the planet below. Upon entering the atmosphere, their electrons are first stripped away by molecules they run into, but as they slow down they start grabbing electrons back. The 'charge exchange reaction' produces intense X-ray auroras. Yet scientists have been baffled as to how Jupiter's magnetic field accelerates these particles. Advertisement

'Juno's direct glimpse of Jupiter's poles shows numerous cyclonic storms clustered together and a storm illuminated in Jupiter's nightside that provided a measurement of its vertical extent.

'The deep microwave sounding of Jupiter by Juno demonstrates the power of this technique for unveiling spatial and temporal structure in the ammonia abundance.

'The initial measurement of Jupiter's gravity will inform interior models with implications for the extent, existence, and mass of Jupiter's core.'

The research was published in the journal Science.

The solar-powered Juno spacecraft launched in 2011, and made its first tour around Jupiter on August 27, 2016.

Juno moves in an elliptical orbit, skimming within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) of Jupiter's cloud tops and passing over the poles.

Juno's mission is scheduled to end in February 2018, when the probe will self-destruct by diving into the planet's atmosphere.

The $1.1 billion project aims to peer beneath the clouds around Jupiter for the first time to learn more about the planet's atmosphere and how much water the planet contains.