Hubble image archive
Ganymede Aurorae (STIS)
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed a pair of auroral belts encircling the Jovian moon Ganymede. The belts were observed in ultraviolet light by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and are colored blue in this illustration. They are overlaid on a visible-light image of Ga...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2015
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2015-09-3505-image
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed a pair of auroral belts encircling the Jovian moon Ganymede. The belts were observed in ultraviolet light by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and are colored blue in this illustration. They are overlaid on a visible-light image of Ganymede taken by NASA's Galileo orbiter. The locations of the glowing aurorae are determined by the moon's magnetic field, and therefore provide a probe of the moon's interior, where the magnetic field is generated. The amount of rocking of the magnetic field, caused by its interaction with Jupiter's own immense magnetosphere, provides evidence that the moon has a subsurface ocean of saline water.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and J. Saur (University of Cologne, Germany);Ganymede Globe Credit: NASA, JPL, and the Galileo Project
Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Ganymede |
| Object Description | Jovian Moon: Jupiter has a diameter of roughly 88,789 miles (142,984 km) at the equator. Ganymede has a diameter of 3,270 miles (5,262 km). |
| Distance | The semi-major axis of Jupiter's orbit about the Sun is 5.2 astronomical units (483 million miles or 778 million km). Ganymede orbits at a mean distance of 665,000 miles (1 million km) from Jupiter. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The image was created from Hubble data from the following proposal: PI: J. Saur (University of Cologne, Germany), P. Feldman and D. Strobel (JHU), K. Retherford (SwRI), M. McGrath (NASA/MSFC), and S. Duling (University of Cologne, Germany). The science team includes: J. Saur and S. Duling (University of Cologne, Germany), L. Roth (SwRI/University of Cologne, Germany), D. Strobel and P. Feldman (JHU), U. Christensen (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany), K. Retherford (SwRI), M. McGrath (NASA/MSFC), F. Musacchio, A. Wennmacher, and F. Neubauer (University of Cologne, Germany), and S. Simon (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta), and O. Hartkorn (University of Cologne, Germany). |
| Instrument | HST>STIS |
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Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
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