NASA's Jupiter Mission Juno Reveals Giant Polar Storms

NASA's Juno mission to the gas giant Jupiter has reached its halfway mark and has revealed new views of cyclones at the poles. The BBC reports: As it orbits the planet every 53 days - Juno performs a science-gathering dive, speeding from pole to pole. Its sensors take measurements of the composition of the planet, in an effort to decipher how the largest world in our Solar System formed. Mapping the magnetic and gravity fields should also expose Jupiter's structure.

But images from JunoCam -- a camera that was intended to capture images that could be shared with the public -- has already given us some surprising insights. 'When we made our first pass over the poles, we knew we were seeing a territory on Jupiter we had never seen before,' said Dr Candice Hansen, from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona. 'What we did not expect was that we would see these orderly polygons of cyclones; huge storms - twice the size of Texas.'

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