Jupiter's moon Ganymede, SPHERE image

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Infrared SPHERE image of Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede. The different coloured regions provide clues to the composition and history of the moon. The bright regions consist mainly of water in the form of ice with hints of various salts. These regions are believed to have formed more recently than the darker patches, whose composition is still unknown. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, even bigger than the planet Mercury. Image obtained in February 2015 by the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) instrument, a component of the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT).

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Size: 2960px × 2960px
Location:
Photo credit: © King & Fletcher/EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: -, 2000s, 2010s, 2015, 21st, astronomical, astronomy, background, black, century, eso, european, exoplanet, galilean, ganymede, high-contrast, ice, icy, iii, infrared, instrument, ir, jupiter, large, moon, natural, observation, observatory, planetary, planetary-mass, research, satellite, science, solar, southern, space, spectro-polarimetric, sphere, surface, system, telescope, vlt