A brown oval in a sea of clouds
Processed image. Kevin M. Gill’s enhanced-colour JunoCam view of a northern North North Equatorial Belt barge, captured 6 September 2018 during flyby 15; published 12 December. It is a different region from the two southern barge observations in this gallery.
Creative Commons Attribution (version not specified by source) · resized to WebP
· Original image source · Image licenceA named atmospheric feature gains meaning in a wider cloudscape.
- World
- Jupiter
- Case date or period
- Observations · 2017–2018
Look closer
The brown barge is an elongated oval in Jupiter’s northern atmosphere, processed from JunoCam data by Kevin M. Gill. Its smooth interior contrasts with busier surrounding clouds.
Follow the evidence
Compare the northern cover oval with two southern barge observations. Gill’s other southern cloudscapes give wider atmospheric context. These are different regions and encounters; tracking an individual vortex needs positions, timing and consistent processing as well as a similar shape.
Built by people looking closely
The credited image processors worked with publicly available mission observations. Their versions are part of this collection, with each person’s processing and licence retained. Compare the treatments and return to the underlying source when a small detail matters.
A barge can fade without losing its identity
John Rogers’ March 2024 Perijove 58 report compares visible and methane-band observations of different northern barges. Some elongated features had faded into the surrounding belt in visible light, yet a faded barge remained dark in the methane image, unlike a nearby bright anticyclonic spot. Rogers linked that contrast to haze and circulation rather than colour alone. These are later examples, not re-identifications of Gill’s 2018 oval; tracking a vortex requires position and time as well as its brown appearance.
Sources & further reading
- Juno Captures 'Brown Barge' — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- Jupiter's Colorful Cloud Belts — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- Outbound View of Jupiter — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- JunoCam public image-processing gallery — Mission Juno / public contributors
- JunoCam at PJ58: Part II: Jupiter images — John Rogers (2024) — British Astronomical Association investigator / Mission Juno archive
- A southern brown barge in close view — NASA / JPL · public processor Kevin M. Gill
- A southern barge against lighter clouds — NASA / JPL · public processor Kevin M. Gill