The mission meant to focus on Jupiter is giving us insights into its unique icy satellites.
The resulting map shows off the stunning variety of features on Ganymede's icy surface."It has dark terrain in it and it has this bright terrain," Bolton said.
Juno has also peeked below that interesting surface with the spacecraft's microwave sensors, which highlight what might be going on beneath the surface of Ganymede and another of Jupiter's icy moons,. The data reveals not only that a patchwork of hotter and colder areas exist under Ganymede's surface, likely resulting from its different terrain types, but also that the moon's ice makes it highly reflective.
This reflective effect was even more extreme on Europa, Bolton said. Juno was also able to use one of its navigation cameras, which use low-light detection of surrounding stars to navigate, to photograph the night side of Europa. Juno also took the opportunity to examine a unique aspect of Ganymede, its magnetic field. Ganymede is the only moon in our solar system known to generate its own magnetic field. Juno gathered data showing that Jupiter's and Ganymede's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, releasing ultraviolet radiation in the process.
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