First Close-Up Photos Taken of Jupiter’s Inner Moons

The first close-up pictures of three small inner moons of Jupiter have been received from the Galileo spacecraft, which took them during a risky trip through the planet’s lethal radiation belts in January. Previous pictures of Thebe, Amalthea and Metis had shown only very large features, while the new images show details as small as 1.2 miles across. The new images show 25-mile-wide craters on both Thebe and Amalthea and a 31-mile-long bright streak on Amalthea. The fourth inner moon, Adrastea, was not imaged. Further information is available at https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo and https://www.news.cornell.edy/releases/April00/Simonelli.moons.deb.html.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II