A spacecraft named Juno went where no human device has gone before to send back spectacular images of Jupiter's famous "Great Red Spot."
On Monday evening, NASA says Juno was at a distance of barely over 8000 miles when it captured the closest, highest-resolution photos of the incredible weather phenomenon ever seen.
NASA reports the move only took about two hours to perform, making it a very small but notable part of the seven year mission to the largest planet.
History suggests the "Great Red Spot" might be more than 300 years old, and it's big enough for planet Earth to fit within.
NASA encouraged private and hobbyist scientists to download the raw Juno data and compile their own images, and that's exactly what happened.
In the above video, Chief Meteorologist Burton Fitzsimmons shows us some of the first images of the giant, swirling storm.
Story's thumbnail is an enhanced-color image of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was created by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Image is approximately illumination adjusted and strongly enhanced to draw viewers’ eyes to the iconic storm and the turbulence around it. The image was taken on July 10, 2017 at 07:07 p.m. PDT (10:07 p.m. EDT), as the Juno spacecraft performed its 7th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 6,130 miles (9,866 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet.