nttHere’s the first of NASA’s top ten scientific images showing the moon, Europe, and its ice shell moving slowly over a briny ocean that’s about 60 miles deep.
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nttEuropa is now seen as a potential habitat for extraterrestrial life.
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New findings from Galileo’s Jupiter visit (photos)
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ntHere’s a look at the volcanically active moon Io (right) and its hot spots (left) shown in an infrared color-coded image taken in 2001. The hottest areas are indicated in white and the hottest area on the map is where the arrow points. Red is the next hottest color, then yellow.
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ntThis closer look at the ice surface of Europa shows a white area that is covered by a fine dust of ice particles while the brown area “has been painted by mineral contaminants carried and spread by water vapor released from below the crust when it was disrupted,” according to NASA.
ntEn route to Jupiter, Galileo snapped this photo of the asteroid 243 Ida from about 6,500 miles. The bright spot to the right is the first known moon to orbit an asteroid. The color has been enhanced, it’s actually gray.
ntThis view of an area called Galileo Regio on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede show an area that’s been pepper by impact craters for several billion years.
ntThis volcano in the Tvashtar region of Io was found to be hotter than any active volcano on Earth.
ntActive volcanos on Io are highlighted during an eclipse. Red indicates the most heat..
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ntttThis image of Jupiter’s moon Callisto shows a region that contains no small impact craters – meaning they must have been eroded away.
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ntThe light blue region around the Great Red Spot shows an ammonia ice cloud. It has been formed by updrafts of ammonia from deep within Jupiter’s atmosphere. The Great Red Spot is a storm that has been raging for at least 300 years. It’s about twice as big as the diameter of Earth.
ntThese images show lightning storms on the night side of Jupiter.
ntIn the final image included in Galileo’s best, Jupiter’s Gossamer rings “are a short lived dynamic phenomena that is the result of small dust particles being ejected from the moons as a result of impacts due to energetic particles in the magnetosphere,” according to NASA.
ntOne of Galileo’s top discoveries is a magnetic field on the solar system’s largest moon, Ganymede.
ntEvidence indicates there most likely is a subsurface ocean on the moon Callisto. Shown here in true color on the left and enhanced right, “reveals a gradual variation across the moon’s hemisphere, perhaps due to implantation of materials onto the surface from space,” according to NASA.
ntHere are true and false colors of an equatorial hotspot. When Galileo arrived at Jupiter, it sent a probe into the planet’s atmosphere which indicated thunderstorms many times larger than Earth’s.
ntSome of Jupiter’s more interesting smaller moons as revealed by Galileo.
