May - Jupiter imaged using the VISIR instrument on the VLT

In July 2016, as the NASA Juno spacecraft was about to arrive at Jupiter, astronomers used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to obtain spectacular new infrared images of Jupiter using the VISIR instrument. The images were part of a campaign to create high-resolution maps of the giant planet to inform the work to be undertaken by Juno, helping astronomers to better understand the gas giant.

This false-colour image was created by selecting and combining the best images obtained from many short VISIR exposures at a wavelength of 5 micrometres.