Description
Jupiter's moon Io casts its shadow on Jupiter whenever it passes in front of the Sun as seen from Jupiter. Many pictures have been taken of Io's shadow on Jupiter, but this is the first from such a close distance. The shadow looms extraordinarily large because the Juno spacecraft was just 8,450 miles (13,600 kilometers) above the cloud tops when this image was acquired by its camera, JunoCam, on Sept. 12, 2019. When seen from this close, the vast expanse of Jupiter curves away over the horizon, and Io's shadow dominates the scene.
Citizen scientist Tanya Oleksuik created this enhanced color image from the JunoCam image taken at 7:54 p.m. PST (10:54 p.m. EST) during Juno's 22nd close pass by Jupiter.
JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at
https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing.
More information about Juno is at http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu.
