This mosaic of Jupiter's ring system was acquired by NASA's Galileo
spacecraft when the Sun was behind the planet, and the spacecraft was
in Jupiter's shadow peering back toward the Sun.
Galileo's November 1996 trajectory
In such a configuration, very small dust-sized particles are accentuated
so both the ring particles and the smallest particles in the upper atmosphere
of Jupiter are highlighted. Such small particles are believed to have
human-scale lifetimes, i.e., very brief compared to the solar system's age.
Jupiter's ring system is composed of three parts: a flat main ring, a
toroidal halo interior to the main ring, and the gossamer ring, which lies
exterior to the main ring. Only the main ring and a hint of the surrounding
halo can be seen in this mosaic. In order to see the less dense
components (the outer halo and gossamer ring) the images must be
overexposed with respect to the main ring.
This composite of
two mosaics was taken through the clear filter (610 nanometers) of
the solid state imaging (CCD) system on November 9, 1996, during
Galileo's third orbit of Jupiter. The ring was approximately 2,300,000
kilometers away. The resolution is approximately 46 kilometers per
picture element from right to left; however, because the spacecraft
was only about 0.5 degrees above the ring plane, the image is highly
foreshortened in the vertical direction. The vertical bright arcs in the
middle of the ring mosaics show the edges of Jupiter and are composed
of images obtained by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in 1979.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the Galileo mission
for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted
on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL
http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational
context for the images can be found at URLhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo
