Swedish photographer and amateur astronomer Peter Rosén has created an incredible new video that combines thousands of photos of Jupiter to show the gas giant’s newly developed massive storms.
Rosén tells PetaPixel he has spent the last seven months “processing, stitching, and stacking” photos of Jupiter for his new citizen science project. Rosén, like many other passionate amateur astronomers, is heavily involved with NASA’s Juno Mission project, which heavily emphasizes the importance of citizen scientists. Alongside constantly sharing JunoCam’s views of the Jovian gas giant, the project invites amateur astronomers to submit the photos of Jupiter they capture from Earth with their own telescopes.
It is these amateur-submitted telescope photos that Rosén has leveraged for his new video.
“In late 2024 and early 2025, I downloaded thousands of still images of Jupiter taken by amateur planetary photographers from around the world stretching over a period of more than three months,” Rosén explains.
He then selected the photos that best overlapped over a 100-day window, remapped all of them into cylindrical projections, corrected them to have uniform sharpness, contrast, luminosity, and color balance, and then stacked and stitched them into 360-degree cylindrical maps. Rosén adds that he did not use any AI during the lengthy process.
The impetus for the project was the appearance of a “tiny white spot in Jupiter’s South Equatorial Belt (SEB) that quickly grew in size during the following weeks” on November 11, 2024. This, Rosén says, was called the “Mid SEB oubtreak.”
Two months later, on January 10, 2025, a new spot appeared in Jupiter’s North Temperature Belt, “the blueish band on top.” This is Juptier’s fastest jet, moving at up to 650 kilometers per hour.
By creating what he refers to as three “virtual probes” in geostationary orbit around Jupiter, Rosén could continuously monitor the storm using images captured by fellow citizen scientists. By carefully collecting, sorting, and processing data, Rosén developed a 360-degree view of the planet.
“These massive storms on Jupiter are quite rare, and more so having two of them erupt in a short period,” Rosén tells PetaPixel. “I make my animations from real amateur pictures so everything is scientifically correct but I also want them to be [aesthetically pleasing] and compelling even to people who are not necessarily into astronomy.”
“Jupiter is like a storm lab, and the scientists from around the world are trying to analyze their origin and behavior to better understand the processes that drive the destructive hurricanes here on Earth.
“A big difference is that we have land mass while Jupiter doesn’t, so the storms can go on unobstructed for very long periods. An example is the Great Red Spot that is an anticyclone that has endured for at least 200 years, possibly 300.”
Rosén adds that Juno discovered that Jupiter’s storms originate from jet streams that go thousands of kilometers deep.
The project, which offers a comprehensive look at the two recent massive storms that erupted on Jupiter, is an excellent example of the value of the citizen scientist community.
“I am involved in the Mission Juno pro-amateur project and decided to monitor and animate these storms as a contribution to these analyses, and I have discovered some intriguing patterns in these storms that I don’t think anybody has seen before,” Rosén says.
He will analyze his findings further and submit a report to the researchers working on the Juno project.
“A big thank you to all the skilled amateur planetary photographers from around the world who upload their images to PVOL and ALPO Japan,” Rosén adds. Their contributions make something like Rosén’s new video possible.
Image credits: Screenshots captured from Peter Rosén’s new video, ‘2 Huge Storms have erupted on Jupiter.’ The images he used were submitted by amateur astronomers as part of the Mission Juno Pro-Amateur project. Rosén meticulously processed, edited and aligned the included images as part of his own contribution to the Juno mission.