NASA Explains Jupiter's Wild North & South Poles

The poles of Jupiter look so dramatically different

from the rest of the planet.

There's giant storms!

The Great Red Spot is twice as big as the whole Earth

and the poles of Jupiter, we see storms but they're smaller

and they look like maybe they're grouped differently

and they're not organized the same way.

Because of the lighting and the way we took the pictures,

you get to see shadows of these storms

that tell us something about the three dimensional structure

of the clouds and the storm.

There's something we'll learn about how weather works

and how storms work on giant planets

and, by extension, how storms work here.

We have a set of instruments designed to measure things

to answer questions that have been puzzling people

for a very long time.

There's a lot you can get with your very first look.

It's like your first brand new look at unknown territory.

You learn the most from the first time you open your eyes.

The scientists on the team are like everybody else,

we love the pictures.

The first time you get a brand new data set,

you see all kinds of stuff in it

that you have to go chase down and figure out, is this real

or is this something that needs to be calibrated

or an error source we haven't eliminated yet?

But your mind doesn't work that way.

Your mind sees these things and you start going,

hey, maybe it's this, maybe it's that!

Basically, if you're a good scientist, what you do is

you say, wait a minute, let's go make sure this is good,

and you work through it methodically.

This first orbit is really exciting

and it's a flood of data.

We have 30-something orbits to go.

It's gonna be a huge amount of data,

a lot of work to understand, but of course

all the scientists are really excited about it.

The data that we got in that one pass, properly analyzed,

is something we'll be learning from for years to come.