NASA's Juno spacecraft is sending back some amazing images of Jupiter

NASA's $1 billion Juno spacecraft completed its 10th high-speed trip around Jupiter on December 16.

The robot gets relatively close to the gas giant and takes new photos with its JunoCam instrument roughly every 53 days while traveling at up to 130,000 mph.

It can take days or sometimes weeks to receive the images, but the wait is worth it. The latest batch of photos features swirling, hallucinatory clouds and storms.

Researchers at NASA and the Southwest Research Institute uploaded the raw image data to their websites late last month. Since then, dozens of people have processed the black-and-white files into gorgeous, calendar-ready color pictures.

Below, Jupiter's southern temperate belt

Juno executes it's wild, elliptical orbit in order to minimize the damage the extreme radiation the planet emits could do to its instruments while it is close.

Below, swirling storm clouds baffle scientists, but appear like a beautiful abstract painting.

During the 53 and a half day orbit, the point at which the spacecraft is closest to the planet is called the Perijove.   Cool word.

The point in an orbit of Jupiter that is furthest away from the planet is called the apojove.

In motion, whoa!  Hang on!