NASAs Juno spacecraft has sent back the first images of Jupiters north pole and the the auroras rippling across its southern pole.
The images were taken during the spacecraft’s first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on.
Juno successfully executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on August 27 when the spacecraft came about 4,200 kilometres above Jupiter’s swirling clouds.
The Juno spacecraft launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system’s gas-giant planets.
The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), supplied by the Italian Space Agency, acquired some remarkable images of Jupiter at its north and south polar regions in infrared wavelengths.