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NIMS Observes Europa's Shadow

March 26, 1998
During the G7 encounter, NASA's Galileo spacecraft observed the shadow of Europa on the clouds of Jupiter during Galileo's fourth orbit. The bright spot in the clouds is an atmospheric hot spot.

This isn't a black hole! During the G7 encounter, the Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) on the Galileo spacecraft observed the shadow of Europa on the clouds of Jupiter during Galileo's fourth orbit. The bright spot in the clouds is an atmospheric hot spot. Galileo was 817,000 km (510,000 miles) away from Jupiter when this image was taken. The shadow of Europa falls partly on a hot spot in the clouds of Jupiter, near 7 degrees N, 325 W. The shadow of Europa is approximately 3100 km across.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the 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.

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