{"id":471680,"date":"2026-05-06T18:37:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471680\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T18:37:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:37:13","slug":"juno-snaps-rare-close-up-of-jupiters-shadowy-moon-thebe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471680\/","title":{"rendered":"Juno Snaps Rare Close-Up of Jupiter\u2019s Shadowy Moon Thebe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft captured a new view of the irregular moon Thebe during a May 1 flyby, revealing the battered world from just 5,000 km away.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.sci.news\/images\/enlarge13\/image_14746e-Thebe.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-109590\" class=\"wp-image-109590 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image_14746-Thebe.jpg\" alt=\"Juno captured this view of Thebe during a close flyby on May 1, 2026. Image credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech.\" width=\"580\" height=\"580\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-109590\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juno captured this view of Thebe during a close flyby on May 1, 2026. Image credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thebe_(moon)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Thebe<\/a> is a small, irregularly shaped moon, with dimensions of roughly 116 x 98 x 84 km and a mean radius of about 49 km.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the second-largest of Jupiter\u2019s inner moons and the seventh-largest moon overall in the Jovian system.<\/p>\n<p>Thebe was discovered in 1979 by astronomer Stephen Synnott using images from NASA\u2019s Voyager 1 spacecraft.<\/p>\n<p>It orbits Jupiter at an average distance of about 221,900 km \u2014 well inside the orbit of Io, Jupiter\u2019s innermost Galilean moon. One orbit takes roughly 16.1 hours.<\/p>\n<p>Like many inner moons, it is tidally locked, meaning the same face always points toward Jupiter.<\/p>\n<p>Thebe has a heavily cratered, dark reddish surface. Its most prominent feature is the large impact crater Zethus, named after Thebe\u2019s mythological twin brother.<\/p>\n<p>One of Thebe\u2019s most notable contributions is that the moon is the primary source of material for Jupiter\u2019s gossamer ring, one of the faint outer rings in Jupiter\u2019s ring system. Micrometeorite impacts kick dust off the moon\u2019s surface, which then spreads into a diffuse ring along Thebe\u2019s orbital path.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThebe resides at the outer edge of Jupiter\u2019s faint ring system and is believed to play a role in the formation of the planet\u2019s \u2018gossamer\u2019 ring through the shedding of dust,\u201d NASA scientists said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The new image of Thebe was captured with the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) onboatd the Juno spacecraft from a distance of approximately 5,000 km.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile the SRU\u2019s primary function is to image star fields for navigation, its high sensitivity in low-light conditions makes it a powerful secondary science instrument,\u201d the researchers said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe SRU has previously been used to discover \u2018shallow lightning\u2019 in Jupiter\u2019s atmosphere and to image the planet\u2019s ring system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft captured a new view of the irregular moon Thebe during a May 1 flyby, revealing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[18,19,17,10212,2663,1024,133,10214,206984],"class_list":{"0":"post-471680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-juno","12":"tag-jupiter","13":"tag-nasa","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-solar-system","16":"tag-thebe"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116529086818844516","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}