NASA's Juno Time-Lapse Shows Jupiter's Gorgeous Blue South Pole

There's no shortage of incredible images from NASA and its variety of spacecraft, and this week's stunning space picture is no exception. The space agency has published a series of images showing Jupiter's south pole in all of its blue glory, each one partially covered in darkness so that the planet's blue mass is only half-visible. The images are part of a time lapse sequence.

According to NASA, the images you see below — which have been color enhanced from the originals — were taken as a time lapse sequence by the space agency's Juno spacecraft. They were captured during Juno's 11th fly-by of Jupiter on February 7, having been snapped between 7:21AM and 8:01AM PT.

Measuring from the top of Jupiter's clouds, the Juno spacecraft was located between 85,292 and 124,856 miles above. Represented in the images are latitudes 84.1 to 75.5 degrees. Look carefully and you can spot slight differences in the various images, though at first glance they seem to be the same.

NASA points out that the differences are more visible if you start with the image on the left and work your way to the right, the ends being the most different. The slight differences you see represent the Juno spacecraft's movements, according to the space agency.

As with all these space images, the photos are available to the public to download. This particular Jupiter time lapse can be found for download and sharing here, while other NASA images can be browsed, downloaded, and shared from this online collection. The JunoCam content specifically can be found here.

SOURCE: NASA