Planetary Picture of the Day
Week of April 21, 2025
All about the spacecraft this week, with images taken by Juno, Hubble, Lucy, Curiosity, and even one from the ISS of Earth.
Monday, 21 April 2025
Jupiter Storm of the High North
A dynamic storm at the southern edge of Jupiter’s northern polar region dominates this Jovian cloudscape, courtesy of NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
This storm is a long-lived anticyclonic oval named North North Temperate Little Red Spot 1 (NN-LRS-1); it has been tracked since 1993 and may still be older. An anticyclone is a weather phenomenon in which winds around the storm flow in the direction opposite to that of the winds around a region of low pressure. It is the third-largest anticyclonic oval on the planet, typically around 6,000 kilometers long. The color varies between red and off-white (as it is now), but this JunoCam image shows that it still has a pale reddish core within the radius of maximum wind speeds.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager. The image has been rotated so that the top represents the equatorial regions, while the bottom shows the planet's northern polar regions.
Tuesday, 22 April 2025
Hubble Spies Cosmic Pillar in Eagle Nebula
This newly reprocessed image, released on April 18, 2025, provides a new view of an enormous, 9.5-light-year-tall pillar of cold gas and dust. Despite its size, it’s just one small piece of the greater Eagle Nebula, also called Messier 16.
The Eagle Nebula is one of many Milky Way nebulae known for their sculpted, dusty clouds. Nebulae take on these fantastic shapes when exposed to powerful radiation and winds from infant stars. Regions with denser gas can better withstand the onslaught of radiation and stellar winds from young stars, and these dense areas remain as dusty sculptures, such as the starry pillar shown here.
Wednesday, 23 April 2025
NASA’s Lucy Spacecraft Images Asteroid Donaldjohanson
The first images from the Lucy mission's flyby of asteroid Donaldjohanson reveal an elongated contact binary shape, characterized by an unusual narrow neck between the two lobes. This is one of the most detailed images returned by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft during its flyby. This image was taken at 1:51 p.m. EDT (17:51 UTC), April 20, 2025, near closest approach, from a range of approximately 1,100 km. The image has been sharpened and processed to enhance contrast.
Thursday, 24 April 2025
Volcanic Plume
Raikoke Volcano on the Kuril Islands rarely erupts. The small, oval-shaped island most recently exploded in 1924 and in 1778. The dormant period ended around 4:00 a.m. local time on June 22, 2019, when a vast plume of ash and volcanic gases shot up from its 700-meter-wide crater. Several satellites, as well as astronauts on the International Space Station, observed a thick plume rise and then stream east as it was pulled into the circulation of a storm in the North Pacific. On the morning of June 22, astronauts shot this photograph of the volcanic plume rising in a narrow column and then spreading out in a part of the plume known as the umbrella region. That is where the density of the plume and the surrounding air equalize, and the plume stops rising. The ring of clouds at the base of the column appears to be water vapor.
Friday, 25 April 2025
Curiosity Looks Downslope
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this view looking back down at the floor of Gale Crater from Mount Sharp on Feb. 7, 2025, the mission's 4,447th Martian day, or sol. Curiosity continued its ascent through a mountainous region known as the sulfate-bearing unit.
Mount Sharp is a 5-kilometer-tall mountain composed of several layers formed during different eras of Martian history. By studying each layer, the rover's team can gain a deeper understanding of how the Martian environment has evolved over time, from a warmer, wetter, and more Earth-like world to the freezing desert it is today. The colors in these images have been adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would perceive them on Earth.
