Juno captured Ganymede’s shadow on the planet

On February 25, 2022, NASA’s Juno spacecraft observed Ganymede cast a sizable dark spot on Jupiter during its 40th close flyby. An observer at Jupiter’s cloud tops within the oval shadow would experience a total eclipse of the Sun, says NASA.

As a result of JunoCam’s proximity to Jupiter, Ganymede’s shadow seems particularly large in this view. The Juno spacecraft was 15 times closer to Jupiter than Ganymede at the time the raw image was taken, flying roughly 44,000 miles (71,000 kilometers) above the tops of the planet’s clouds.

Citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos created this enhanced-color image using raw data from the JunoCam instrument.