Jupiter’s moon Io rises just off the horizon of the gas giant planet in this image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Slightly larger than Earth’s moon, Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar system.
This color-enhanced image was taken at 2:26 p.m. PDT (5:56 p.m. EDT) on Oct. 29, 2018 as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 11,400 miles (18,400 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, at approximately 32 degrees south latitude.
Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Justin Cowart created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. This image has been rotated approximately 155 degrees from the source image.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and to process into image products at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam.
More information about Juno is at: https://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu.
Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Justin Cowart