Ganymede from Juno

What does the largest moon in the Photo voltaic Machine procure out about like? Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, elevated than even Mercury and Pluto, has an wintry surface speckled with sparkling younger craters overlying a combination of older, darker, extra cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. The motive in the abet of the grooved terrain remains a topic of learn, with a number one hypothesis relating to it to shifting ice plates. Ganymede is belief to non-public an ocean layer that contains extra water than Earth — and might perchance perchance well maintain existence. Fancy Earth’s Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face in direction of its central planet, in this case Jupiter. The featured image was as soon as captured last week by NASA’s robotic Juno spacecraft because it passed fully about 1000 kilometers above the immense moon. The end plod reduced Juno’s orbital duration around Jupiter from 53 days to 43 days. Juno continues to interrogate the massive planet’s excessive gravity, weird and wonderful magnetic field, and intricate cloud buildings. Final week’s picture voltaic eclipse: Critical photos submitted to APOD