'Textbooks will need to be updated': Jupiter is smaller and flatter than we thought, Juno spacecraft reveals

View of one-half of Jupiter. Swirling rings of gold, brown, green, and blue dust and gas clouds wrap vertically around the sphere of the planet. A large dark spot is seen toward the bottom left and smaller spots of white dot the surface, breaking up the rings of swirling clouds and dust. .

Jupiter is slightly smaller and flatter than scientists thought for decades, a new study finds.

Researchers used radio data from the Juno spacecraft to refine measurements of the solar system's largest planet. Although the differences between the current and previous measurements are small, they are improving models of Jupiter's interior and of other gas giants like it outside the solar system, the team reported Feb. 2 in the journal Nature Astronomy.