NASA's Juno spacecraft captures 'pepperoni' storms on Jupiter’s North Pole | Watch

Marking National Pizza Day, the US space agency, NASA, recently shared a video of “pepperoni” storms topping Jupiter. Taking to Instagram, NASA released a video of the north pole of the giant planet. In the clip, one can see a dense formation of storms in red and yellow hues. 

In the caption, the US space agency explained the colour of the storm and the occurrence. It said that the video is of an infrared view of Jupiter’s north pole. The video utilises imagery derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA solar system mission Juno. 

Adding quirk to the post, NASA wrote, “National Pizza Day? How about Interplanetary Pizza Day? Our Juno mission saw ‘pepperoni' storms topping Jupiter.”

Further, NASA explained that the yellow areas are warmer as they are deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The dark areas, on the other hand, are colder because they are higher up in Jupiter’s atmosphere. In the caption, the space agency also stated that the “brightness temperature” is a measurement of the radiance travelling from the top of the atmosphere towards Juno. The brightness temperature is expressed in units of temperature, the highest being 260K and the lowest being around 190K. 

The video was captured during Juno's fourth pass over Jupiter on February 2, 2017. Since shared, the post has managed to gather over one million views. The video has gone viral and has left netizens in complete shock. "Always beautiful and massive Jupiter!," wrote one social media user. “Extra large pepperoni pizza! Also hot and spicy,” added another. 

Rare interacting galaxies

Meanwhile, NASA regularly shares stunning images of outer space on its official social media pages. Often, the US space agency collects data from multiple telescopes and observatories. Recently, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope even released an image of a group of three galaxies, about 425 million light-years from the Earth. In the picture, the three galaxies seem to be interacting with each other. NASA stated that it appeared that the two galaxies on the upper right look like a starship known as the USS Enterprise from the American science fiction media franchise Star Trek.

Image: Instagram/ Pixabay