The orbital paths of Jupiter's innermost satellites are shown
relative to the size of Jupiter. Europa and Io, two of Jupiter's largest
moons, were discovered by Galileo in the 17th century and have been objects
of detailed imaging by NASA's Voyager and Galileo spacecraft. All the small
inner satellites, Metis, Adrastea, Amalthea, and Thebe, are associated with
components of Jupiter's rings, but for clarity, only the main ring is shown
in this image. The main ring shows a marked decrease in brightness
near the orbit of Jupiter's innermost moon, Metis. Adrastea orbits
at the outer edge of the main ring. Metis' orbit is only about 1,000 kilometers
(about 600 miles) closer to Jupiter than Adrastea's, but the separation
is not distinguishable within the resolution of this drawing. Amalthea and
Thebe lie at outer edges of the two components of the gossamer ring.
The rings are formed by debris knocked off the small, low-gravity satellites,
by impacts of small meteoroids, which are fragments of asteroids and comets.
The Jupiter image was created from a map based on data obtained
by the Hubble Space Telescope.
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:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.
