Figure 1. Citizen scientist Thomas Thumopoulos created this color-enhanced image using raw data from the JunoCam tool. At the time these initial images were taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 44,000 miles (71,000 km) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, about 55 degrees south latitude, and 15 times closer than Ganymede, which orbits about 666,000 miles (1.1 million km). . )) far from Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Image processing by Thomas Thomopoulos © CC BY
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Figure 2. Illustration of the approximate geometry of Ganymede’s shadow projected onto a Jupiter sphere.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Image processing by Brian Swift © CC BY
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JunoCam captured this image from very close to Jupiter, which makes Ganymede’s shadow appear very large. Figure 2, created by resident scientist Brian Swift using JunoCam data, shows the approximate geometry of the visible region, projected onto Jupiter.
JunoCam raw images are publicly available for viewing and processing in Image Products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing.
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the fifth planet from the sun. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined, but only about one thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter beyond the moon and
Ganymede, a satellite of Jupiter, is the largest and most massive moon in the Solar System. It is the ninth largest object in the Solar System (including the Sun) and the largest without a large atmosphere. It has a diameter of 5,268 kilometers (3,273 miles), making it 26 percent larger in volume than Mercury, but only 45 percent mass.
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