Ganymede Aurorae (STIS)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope observed a pair of auroral belts encircling the Jovian moon Ganymede. The belts were observed in ultraviolet light by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and are colored blue in this illustration. They are overlaid on a visible-light image of Ganymede taken by NASA's Galileo orbiter. The locations of the glowing aurorae are determined by the moon's magnetic field, and therefore provide a probe of the moon's interior, where the magnetic field is generated. The amount of rocking of the magnetic field, caused by its interaction with Jupiter's own immense magnetosphere, provides evidence that the moon has a subsurface ocean of saline water.

About the data

The image was created from Hubble data from the following proposal: 12244 PI: J. Saur (University of Cologne, Germany), P. Feldman and D. Strobel (JHU), K. Retherford (SwRI), M. McGrath (NASA/MSFC), and S. Duling (University of Cologne, Germany).

The science team includes: J. Saur and S. Duling (University of Cologne, Germany), L. Roth (SwRI/University of Cologne, Germany), D. Strobel and P. Feldman (JHU), U. Christensen (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany), K. Retherford (SwRI), M. McGrath (NASA/MSFC), F. Musacchio, A. Wennmacher, and F. Neubauer (University of Cologne, Germany), and S. Simon (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta), and O. Hartkorn (University of Cologne, Germany).