Ganymede_JunoGill_2217.jpg


Summary

Description
English: Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. The cause of the grooved terrain remains a topic of research, with a leading hypothesis relating it to shifting iced plates. Ganymede is though to have an ocean layer that contains more water than Earth -- and might contain life. Like Earth's Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter. The featured image was captured last week by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft as it passed only about 1000 kilometers above the immense moon. The close pass reduced Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53 days to 43 days. Juno continues to study the giant planet's high gravity, unusual magnetic field, and complex cloud structures.
Date
Source https://science.nasa.gov/ganymede-juno / http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210614.html
Author NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; processing by Kevin M. Gill

Licensing

Image
Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA . NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted ". (See Template:PD-USGov , NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy .)
Warnings:
Processing
w:en:Creative Commons
attribution
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Attribution: Kevin M. Gill
You are free:
  • to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • to remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
  • attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

Captions

Ganymede as photographed by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft

Éléments décrits dans ce fichier

depicts