JUNO’S GREATEST HITS

Over the last four years Juno has revolutionised our view of Jupiter

THE GREAT BLUE SPOT

When the Juno team put together their map of the magnetic field, they discovered a dark spot of highly concentrated magnetism near the equator. Though invisible to the naked eye, the patch appeared blue in their map’s colour scheme – hence its name.

JUPITER HAS WATER

Juno found that Jupiter has three times more water than the Sun, putting to bed a decades-old mystery. In 1995 the Galileo spacecraft’s measurements indicated that the planet was far more arid, which suggested that the early Solar System had a lot less water than we see today.

SUPERCHARGED AURORAE

The electrical field around Jupiter’s poles, which helps create the aurorae, is around

100 times more charged than Earth’s. Juno also discovered a new ring-shaped feature that glows in the ultraviolet and which expands out at around 5km/s.

THE STORMS OF THE POLES

Juno was able to get the first ever look at Jupiter’s poles from above, finding they were swarmed by storms. The north pole has a single central storm, surrounded by eight companions, ranging from 4,000km to 7,000km in size, which have remained stable throughout Juno’s mission.

JUPITER’S BELTS RUN DEEP NEAR THE EQUATOR

The spacecraft was able to look deep down into the stripes of wind and cloud known as belts and zones. Near the equator the regions go down 3,000km, becoming shallower towards the poles before blending into the polar storms.

THE GREAT RED SPOT – IN 3D

During the first part of its mission, Juno got a good look at the Great Red Spot, a giant maelstrom which has been raging for centuries. The spacecraft measured that the storm reaches down 320km into Jupiter’s atmosphere – over 30 times deeper than the deepest point of Earth’s oceans.