Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

November 7, 1996
See Explanation. Clicking on the picture will download the highest resolution version available.

Fields of Minerals on Ganymede
Credit: NIMS, Galileo Mission, JPL, NASA

Explanation: What treasures lie on the surface of Ganymede? Last week, NASA released a map of Jupiter's largest moon made by the Galileo Orbiter highlighting ice and minerals deposits. The leftmost photograph by Voyager shows surface features in visible light, but the rightmost photograph, taken in infrared light by Galileo, shows the locations of minerals in red and ice grains in blue. The NIMS team is working to identify these minerals with preliminary hopes of finding emission indicative of montmorillonite and alunite

Tomorrow's picture: A Solar Corona Ejection

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Technical Rep.: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
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