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galsat.txt
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1996-01-12
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FOR RELEASE: October 10, 1995
PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC95-35
HUBBLE PHOTO GALLERY OF JUPITER'S GALILEAN SATELLITES
This is a Hubble Space Telescope "family portrait" of the four largest
moons of Jupiter, first observed by the Italian scientist Galileo
Galilei nearly four centuries ago. Located approximately one-half
billion miles away, the moons are so small that, in visible light, they
appear as fuzzy disks in the largest ground-based telescopes. Hubble
can resolve surface details seen previously only by the Voyager
spacecraft in the early 1980s. While the Voyagers provided close-up
snapshots of the satellites, Hubble can now follow changes on the moons
and reveal other characteristics at ultraviolet and near-infrared
wavelengths.
Over the past year Hubble has charted new volcanic activity on Io's
active surface, found a faint oxygen atmosphere on the moon Europa, and
identified ozone on the surface of Ganymede. Hubble ultraviolet
observations of Callisto show the presence of fresh ice on the surface
that may indicate impacts from micrometeorites and charged particles
from Jupiter's magnetosphere.
Hubble observations will play a complementary role when the Galileo
spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in December of this year.
Credit: K. Noll (STScI), J. Spencer (Lowell Observatory), and NASA
Image files in GIF and JPEG format may be accessed on Internet via
anonymous ftp from ftp.stsci.edu in /pubinfo.
The same images are available via World Wide Web from URL
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html, or via links in
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html
GIF JPEG
PRC95-35 Galilean Satellites gif/GalSat.gif jpeg/GalSat.jpg