December 14, 2018
The elements that make you — the calcium in your bones, the oxygen in your lungs — were scattered across space by dying stars long before...
Swimming on Jupiter
Birthday · December 14, 2018
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APOD published December 14, 2018. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
On October 29, the Juno spacecraft once again dove near the turbulent Jovian cloud tops. Its 16th orbital closest approach or perijove passage, brought Juno within 3,500 kilometers of the Solar System's largest planetary atmosphere. These frames, recorded by JunoCam while the spacecraft cruised 20 - 50 thousand kilometers above the planet's middle southern latitudes, seem to follow a swirling cloud shaped remarkably like a dolphin. Swimming along Jupiter's darker South South Temperate Belt, this dolphin is itself planet-sized though, some thousands of kilometers across. Juno's next perijove passage is coming up on December 21.