A new image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft shows a long, brown oval known as a ‘brown barge’ in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere.
A ‘brown barge’ cyclone in Jupiter’s South Equatorial Belt. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.
Brown barges are cyclonic regions that usually lie within Jupiter’s dark North Equatorial Belt, although they are sometimes found in the similarly dark South Equatorial Belt as well.
They can often be difficult to detect visually because their color blends in with the dark surroundings.
At other times, as with this image from NASA’s Juno orbiter, the dark belt material recedes, creating a lighter-colored background against which the brown barge is more conspicuous.
Brown barges usually dissipate after the entire cloud belt undergoes an upheaval and reorganizes itself.
Juno is giving us the first glimpses of the detailed structure within such a barge.
This image was taken on September 6, 2018 as the spacecraft performed its 15th close flyby of Jupiter.
At the time, Juno was 7,425 miles (11,950 km) from the gas giant’s cloud tops, above a southern latitude of approximately 22 degrees.
