Figure 1. Citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos created this enhanced-color image the utilize of raw files from the JunoCam instrument. At the time the raw image used to be taken, the Juno spacecraft used to be about 44,000 miles (71,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 55 levels south, and 15 times nearer than Ganymede, which orbits about 666,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) a long way from Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Image processing by Thomas Thomopoulos © CC BY
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this comely see of Jupiter within the route of the mission’s 40th shut cross by the tall planet on February 25, 2022. The tall, darkish shadow on the left facet of the image used to be forged by Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
Citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos created this enhanced-color image the utilize of raw files from the JunoCam instrument (Figure 1). At the time the raw image used to be taken, the Juno spacecraft used to be about 44,000 miles (71,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 55 levels south, and 15 times nearer than Ganymede, which orbits about 666,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) a long way from Jupiter.
An observer at Jupiter’s cloud tops all around the oval shadow would skills a whole eclipse of the Solar. Total eclipses are extra general on Jupiter than Earth for several reasons. Jupiter has four main moons (Galilean satellites) that on the total cross between Jupiter and the Solar: in seven days, Ganymede transits as soon as; Europa, twice; and Io, four times. And since Jupiter’s moons orbit in a airplane shut to Jupiter’s orbital airplane, the moon shadows are on the total forged upon the planet.
Figure 2. Illustration of the approximate geometry of the Ganymede’s shadow projected onto a globe of Jupiter.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Image processing by Brian Swift © CC BY
JunoCam captured this image from very shut to Jupiter, making Ganymede’s shadow appear especially tall. Figure 2, created by citizen scientist Brian Swift the utilize of JunoCam files, illustrates the approximate geometry of the visible space, projected onto a globe of Jupiter.
JunoCam’s raw footage are readily available for the public to behold and job into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing.
Jupiter is the best planet within the Solar System and the fifth planet from the Solar. It’s a gasoline huge with a mass that is higher than two and a half of times that of the total other planets within the Solar System blended, nonetheless is extra healthy about one-thousandth the mass of the Solar. Jupiter, within the help of the Moon and Venus, is the third brightest pure object within the Earth’s evening sky, and it has been observed since prehistoric times. It used to be named after Jupiter, the Roman god and king of the gods.
Ganymede, a satellite tv for pc of the planet Jupiter, is the best and most huge of the Solar System’s moons. It’s the ninth-greatest object within the Solar System (including the Solar) and the best and not utilizing a primary atmosphere. It has a diameter of 5,268 kilometers (3,273 miles), making it 26 percent greater by quantity than Mercury, nonetheless it and not utilizing a doubt is extra healthy 45 percent as huge.