Skip to main content

You can help analyze Juno images of Jupiter’s clouds

Some of the most stunning images of Jupiter have been captured by the Juno probe, which has been in orbit around the planet since 2016. And many of these images have investigated Jupiter’s strange atmosphere, including peering through the atmosphere’s many layers. Now, a citizen scientist project is inviting members of the public to help with this work, by identifying atmospheric features in Juno data.

The project from researchers at the University of Minnesota and NASA is called Jovian Vortex Hunter and aims to categorize the different types of clouds seen at Jupiter, in terms of their shapes and sizes. It takes data from Juno’s JunoCam imager and asks volunteers to look for specific features called atmospheric vortices. These clouds have a particular round or elliptical shape, similar to how a hurricane appears when seen from above.

An image of the 22nd orbit of the Juno spacecraft around Jupiter shows the region close to the north pole of the planet.
An image of the 22nd orbit of the Juno spacecraft around Jupiter shows the region close to the north pole of the planet. There is a huge diversity in the colors and shapes of these vortices (hurricane-like storms). Scientists need to create a catalog of these storms in order to understand how they form. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/SwRI/Ramanakumar Sankar

By asking for help from the public, the researchers can work through the data much quicker than they could on their own. “There are so many images that it would take several years for our small team to examine all of them,” said Ramanakumar Sankar, leader of the project, in a statement. “We need help from the public to identify which images have vortices, where they are and how they appear. With the catalog of features (particularly vortices) in place, we can study the physics behind how these features form, and how they are related to the structure of the atmosphere, particularly below the clouds, where we cannot directly observe them.”

Recommended Videos

The project uses the Zooniverse platform to present images, which volunteers then scan for vortices. Once this has been done many times, the data can be used both for scientific analysis and for training an algorithm to work on feature identification as well.

And if you’re wondering what happens if someone has difficulty identifying a feature, or different volunteers disagree about whether a feature is there in an image or not — that’s actually useful data for the researchers to have. “If one person is having trouble categorizing an image, maybe others will, too,” Sankar explained. “That might indicate that we have found something new or unique that we more closely examine.”

To participate in the project, you can head to the Jovian Vortex Hunter website.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Event Horizon Telescope can now take images of black holes that are 50% sharper
Illustration of the highest-resolution detections ever made from the surface of Earth

The Event Horizon Telescope project, the group that took the first-ever image of a black hole, has made another historic breakthrough, making the highest-ever resolution observations of space taken from the Earth's surface. The project uses facilities around the globe to turn the Earth itself into a giant observatory, which is capable of taking highly precise measurements of distant galaxies.

The latest observations made use of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a large array of radio telescopes located in Chile, as well as other facilities in Spain, France, and Hawaii. To get higher-resolution images than previous observations, scientists weren't able to make the telescope bigger -- as it was already the size of the Earth -- so they observed at a higher frequency instead.

Read more
Citizen scientists spot mysterious object shooting out of the galaxy at 1 million mph
This artist's concept shows a hypothetical white dwarf, left, that has exploded as a supernova. The object at right is CWISE J1249, a star or brown dwarf ejected from this system as a result of the explosion. This scenario is one explanation for where CWISE J1249 came from.

Citizen scientists have helped to identify an incredibly fast-moving object in space, which is traveling at such a speed that it will shoot out of the Milky Way and head out into intergalactic space.

Amateur astronomers working on the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project spotted the object, which was also observed by the recently-retired NASA NEOWISE telescope. The trio of citizen scientists -- Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden -- spotted the object named CWISE J124909.08+362116.0 several years ago, and now it has been confirmed they are co-authors on a paper about its discovery.

Read more
James Webb takes rare direct image of a nearby super-Jupiter
Artist’s impression of a cold gas giant orbiting a red dwarf. Only a point of light is visible on the JWST/MIRI images. Nevertheless, the initial analysis suggests the presence of a gaseous planet that may have properties similar to Jupiter.

Even with huge ground-based observatories and the latest technology in space-based telescopes, it's still relatively rare for astronomers to take an image of an exoplanet. Planets outside our solar system are so far away and so small and dim compared to the stars they orbit that it's extremely difficult to study them directly. That's why most observations of exoplanets are made by studying their host stars. Now, though, the James Webb Space Telescope has directly imaged a gas giant -- and it's one of the coldest exoplanets observed so far.

The planet, named Epsilon Indi Ab, is located 12 light-years away and has an estimated temperature of just 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). The fact it is so cool compared to most exoplanets meant that Webb's sensitive instruments were needed to study it.

Read more