July 11, 1996
Somewhere above you, light is arriving from places so distant their names feel like poetry.
Ganymede: A Really Groovy Moon
Birthday · July 11, 1996
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published July 11, 1996. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Ganymede's surface is a wrinkled mess. As large ice-sheets shift on the moon's surface, parts of the surface buckle causing high ridges, deep furrows, and parallel grooves. This photo, taken by the Galileo spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter, was released yesterday. The large circular feature near the picture bottom is a large impact crater. The impact that caused this large crater also caused the strange dark ejecta seen to the crater's right. The Sun illuminates the scene from the lower left. The Galileo spacecraft has also just discovered that Ganymede has a region of orbiting charged particles called a magnetosphere - a first for any moon. How Ganymede is able to generate a magnetosphere is a mystery. APOD's Archive of Galileo at Ganymede