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Astronomy Image of the Day

Fields of Minerals on Ganymede Credit:

07 November 1996

Author not provided

NASA Astronomy Image of the Day for 07 November 1996

What treasures lie on the surface of Ganymede? Last week, NASA released a map of Jupiter's largest moon made by the Galileo Orbiter highlighting ice and minerals deposits. The leftmost photograph by Voyager shows surface features in visible light, but the rightmost photograph, taken in infrared light by Galileo, shows the locations of minerals in red and ice grains in blue. The NIMS team is working to identify these minerals with preliminary hopes of finding emission indicative of montmorillonite and alunite

Image and explanation courtesy of NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day