Friday, October 23, 2009

Thebe from Galileo

Thebe, with a mean diameter of about 100 kilometers, is the second largest of Jupiter's small inner moons.  It was discovered by Voyager 1 during its approach to the planet in 1979.  The image below contains all the images Galileo obtained.  The closest view (third column, middle row) as a resolution of 2 km/pixel, nominally better than the best view of the largest inner moon, Amalthea, although this image is incredibly noisy, rendering an effective resolution somewhat poorer.



Galileo obtained a color view on its fourth orbit, showing Thebe to have a reddish color.


Here is a combination of the color data with the closest image.



Processed images Copyright Ted Stryk, Raw Data Courtesy NASA/JPL

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