NASA spacecraft catches ‘eerie face’ on Jupiter

A NASA spacecraft captured an image of what the space agency described as an “eerie face” during a recent pass of Jupiter.

The image, which was taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in September, shows unique cloud formations in an area of the far northern region of the planet called Jet N7, according to the Mission Juno page on the space agency’s website.

“The image shows turbulent clouds and storms along Jupiter’s terminator, the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet,” a description of the image reads. “The low angle of sunlight highlights the complex topography of features in this region, which scientists have studied to better understand the processes playing out in Jupiter’s atmosphere.”

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NASA goes on to explain that what people see in the image is an example of pareidolia, which the space agency explains as “the effect that causes observers to perceive faces or other patterns in largely random patterns.”

“Citizen scientist Vladimir Tarasov made this image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument,” the description continues. “At the time the raw image was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 4,800 miles (about 7,700 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 69 degrees north.”

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The image is not the first unique shape captured in our solar system captured by NASA in recent months, being taken around the same time as a never-before-seen photo of one of Saturn’s moons that also featured a unique shape the space agency comparing the photo to several popular foods.

“Ravioli, pierogi, empanada… What do you see? No wrong answers,” NASA posted on its Instagram account in September. 

The photos, which were taken from the Cassini spacecraft, were actually pictures of Pan, the innermost of Saturn’s 145 recognized moons.