Planetary Picture of the Day
Week of August 9, 2021
Vortexes, cyclones, and typhoons . . . on Earth or in space, Mother Nature is powerful.
Monday, August 9, 2021
Image Reprocessing: Andy Saunders
Apollo 14 Heads Home
Earthrise from the command module Kittyhawk as the Apollo 14 crew was heading back to Earth.
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Ganymede in Infrared
This infrared view of Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede was obtained by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its July 20th, 2021, flyby. Happy 10th anniversary, Juno!
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
The Power of Nature
The eye of super typhoon Trami as photographed from the International Space Station in 2018 by European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst.
Thursday, August 12, 2021
Cyclone on Jupiter
A cyclonic storm in Jupiter's northern hemisphere is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Many bright white cloud tops can be seen popping up in and around the arms of the rotating storm. The color-enhanced image was taken at 9:25 a.m. PST (12:25 p.m. EST) on Feb. 12, 2019, as the spacecraft performed its 17th science flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 8,000 kilometers from the planet's cloud tops, above approximately 44 degrees north latitude.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.
Friday, August 13, 2021
Saturnian Vortex
This incredible image captured by the Cassini spacecraft from a distance of about 380,000 kilometers (240,000 miles) shows stunning detail in Saturn’s atmosphere. Clouds rise and sink and get stretched out, forming long valleys and ridges, streamers circling the planet’s pole. This vortex is huge: over 2,000 kilometers in diameter.
