This isn’t an optical illusion, but rather real “pepperoni” storms topping Jupiter that NASA’s Juno spacecraft observed during its mission. More specifically, it’s an infrared view of Jupiter’s North Pole that utilizes imagery generated from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument. The yellow areas you see are warmer, while the sections are colder and higher up in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Read more for the video and additional information.
In this short video, the highest “brightness temperature” is essentially around 260K (about -13°C) and the lowest approximately 190K (about -83°C). For those who are even more technically inclined, the “brightness temperature” is a measurement of the radiance, at 5 µm, traveling upwards from the top of Jupiter’s atmosphere towards Juno, expressed in units of temperature. These images were captured during Juno’s fourth pass over Jupiter on Feb. 2, 2017.
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