Probe Sends Back Incredible Photos of Jupiter

The New Horizons proble is sending back incredible pictures of Jupiter, including a close encounter look at the planet's "Little Red Spot" and the birth of a volcano on a near-by moon.

If you think it looks like a Van Gogh painting, you aren't alone. But this photo is real. A robotic probe the size of piano captured incredible images using seven cameras from a cozy distance of only 1.4 million miles away. The photos revealed the closest picture yet of the "Little Red Spot" a storm the size of Earth that some same resmbles Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting. The probe, called New Horizons, was on its way to Pluto when it did a "real world fly by" in February. About 70 percent of the information from the probe has been sent to Earth, including details that small moods are herding dust and boulders into Jupiter's rings. "The boulder-sized particles are definitely being controlled by these shepherding satellites," Jeff Moore of the NASA Ames Research Center in California told the briefing. Getting close to Jupiter meant that the New Horizons probe could use the planet's gravity to propel it toward Pluto, shaving off three years and allowing it to arrive by 2015. Scientists also can see Jupiter's volcanic moon featuring the volcano Tvashtar which spewed an "umbrella-shaped plume" 200 miles out into space. They have also spotted the birth of a new volcano that has yet to create a plume.