When it comes to the planet Jupiter, it may be a tempestuous ball of uninhabitable gas, but that doesn’t mean it can’t give us the occasional scare.
Aside from its immense size and engulfing storms, the swirling cloud formations on Jupiter can take on some unnerving shapes. NASA’s Juno probe captured one such formation in early September that bears a striking resemblance to a face filled with angst and dread, evoking the spirit of Edvard Munch’s famous painting “The Scream”.
During its 54th close flyby, known as a perijove, on September 7, 2023, Juno managed to photograph an area in the far north of Jupiter called Jet N7. Jets on Jupiter are powerful wind streams that separate the planet’s distinct stripes, known as belts and zones. These jets delve deep into Jupiter’s atmosphere and create complex and captivating cloud patterns on its surface.
Juno’s perijove brought it within 7,700 kilometers (4,800 miles) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, allowing it to capture the terminator over Jet N7. The terminator refers to the thin line separating night and day, a vital feature for scientific purposes. When sunlight hits obliquely, shadows lengthen, similar to the way shadows lengthen on Earth at dusk.
Through this lighting effect, scientists can observe features more clearly on Jupiter’s cloud tops, similar to how shining a light on the side of an oil painting reveals its texture. By studying these features, scientists hope to gain insights into the dynamics of Jupiter’s extraordinary and tempestuous storms.
Despite being the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter’s inner workings remain largely unknown. However, with advanced technology like Juno, we are gradually unraveling its mysteries. Since its initial perijove in July 2016, Juno has approached Jupiter closely every month or two, providing us with fresh glimpses of the planet’s breathtaking cloud patterns. As humans, we naturally tend to perceive shapes and patterns, leading to a phenomenon called pareidolia. This psychological tendency allows us to spot familiar figures in the clouds of Jupiter.
Animals are often the subject of such pareidolia, but face pareidolia is perhaps the most powerful form. We can perceive faces in the smallest smudge on bathroom tiles or the shape of foliage in a distant tree. Such is the strength of this effect that we can even assign emotions, age, and gender to these illusory faces.
Therefore, discovering a face in Jupiter’s clouds is unsurprising. What is surprising is that it doesn’t happen more frequently. Perhaps we just need to pay closer attention.
If you’re interested, you can download a high-resolution version of the image from the NASA website if you need a spooky Halloween-themed phone background.
