Every 53 days the Juno probe completes a close flyby of Jupiter. On Tuesday October 24, Juno successfully completed its eighth science flyby out of a planned twelve before the scheduled mission end in July next year. After NASA uploaded the new data to its JunoCam website, citizen scientists have been optimizing the images to create some of the most mind-blowing and spectacular pictures of the giant planet seen to date.
Juno's current orbit brings it to within 2,600 miles (4,200 kms) of Jupiter, once every 53 days. Originally the plan was to drop into a shorter orbital pattern and complete 37 flybys over its 20 month mission, but due to a mechanical difficulty the NASA team erred on the side of caution and maintained the safer initial orbit.
NASA is uploading all the raw Juno image data and calling on the general public to process them. This process was traditionally done by NASA in-house as the image data received from outer space probes often needs cropping, enhancements and reconstruction.
Take a look through our gallery of the latest spectacular Juno images of Jupiter from some brilliantly talented citizen scientists.
