Ring System Mosaic |
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The Galileo spacecraft acquired the top mosaic of Jupiter's ring system when the spacecraft was in Jupiter's shadow looking back toward the Sun. Jupiter's ring system (the inset diagram) is composed of three parts: an outermost gossamer ring, a flat main ring, and an innermost donut-shaped halo. These rings are made up of dust-sized particles that are blasted off of the nearby inner satellites by small impacts. This image was taken on November 9, 1996 at a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles).
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