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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Hubble Space Telescope caught Ganymede playing ‘peek-a-boo’. In the crisp Hubble picture, Jupiter’s largest moon shows before it ducks behind the huge planet.

The Ganymede finishes an orbit around the huge planet in every seven days.

Composed of ice and rock, Ganymede is considered the largest moon in the whole solar system. It is even larger to the planet Mercury. Ganymede resembles a dirty snowball just like Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system. Jupiter is very big that just a portion of the Southern Hemisphere can be seen in the pictures.

The view of Hubble is sharp that the astronomers see features on the surface of Ganymede, most especially the white crater, Tros, ray system, and the bright streaks of object blasted from the crater. The Tros and the ray system are about Arizona’s width.

The picture also demonstrates the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, the big eye-shaped feature in the upper left. The storm is the size of two Earths, the Great Red Spot is raging for over 300 years. The sharp view of Hubble of the large planet reveals the cloud’s texture in the Jovian atmosphere and several other vortices and storms.

The astronomers utilise the pictures in studying the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. As Ganymede moves across behind the large planet, it reflects the sunlight that passes in the Jupiter’s atmosphere.


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