08.10.17

Jupiter Fractal Art    

Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Mik Petter

See Jupiter’s Great Red Spot as you’ve never seen it before in this new Jovian work of art.

Artist Mik Petter created this unique, digital artwork using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The art form, known as fractals, uses mathematical formulas to create art with an infinite variety of form, detail, color and light. The tumultuous atmospheric zones in and around the Great Red Spot are highlighted by the author's use of colorful fractals.

Vibrant colors of various tints and hues, combined with the almost organic-seeming shapes, make this image seem to be a colorized and crowded petri dish of microorganisms, or a close-up view of microscopic and wildly-painted seashells.

The original JunoCam image was taken on July 10, 2017 at 7:10 p.m. PDT (10:10 p.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed its seventh close flyby of Jupiter. The spacecraft captured the image from about 8,648 miles (13,917 kilometers) above the tops of the clouds of the planet at a latitude of -32.6 degrees.

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam