Io and Ganymede
Date: 17 Jan 2007

The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this 4-millisecond exposure of Jupiter and two of its moons at 01:41:04 UTC on 17 January 2007. The spacecraft was 68.5 million km (42.5 million miles) from Jupiter, closing in on the giant planet at 66,790 km (41,500 miles) per hour. The volcanic moon Io is the closest planet to the right of Jupiter; the icy moon Ganymede is to Io's right. The shadows of each satellite are visible atop Jupiter's clouds; Ganymede's shadow is draped over Jupiter's northwestern limb.


Ganymede's average orbit distance from Jupiter is about 1.07 million km (620,000 miles); Io's is 422,000 km (262,000 miles). Both Io and Ganymede are larger than Earth's moon; Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury.


Last Update: 7 Dec 2011 (AMB)

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute