Juno also snapped pictures of Jupiter's potato-shaped inner moon, named Amalthea. With a radius of only 52 miles (84 kilometers), Amalthea is significantly smaller than Earth 's moon.

Jupiter, roughly 562 million miles from Earth today, has nearly 100 moons. But Batygin and his collaborator Fred Adams' research focused on two of the smaller ones, Amalthea and Thebe.

In a mission that changed our understanding of gas giants, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft made history not just in orbit but also ...

Batygin and Adams took an unconventional approach to determine Jupiter’s ancient size by studying the orbits of its tiny moons Amalthea and Thebe.

They achieved this by analyzing the subtle orbital behaviors of Jupiter’s innermost moons, Amalthea and Thebe. Moons Unlock Jupiter’s Early Secrets ...

Amalthea and Thebe are both small and irregularly shaped. They also orbit Jupiter more closely than Io, the closest of Jupiter's four Galilean moons.

The clues to uncovering this early episode of Jupiter's past lie in two of its small moons, Amalthea and Thebe, which exhibit unusual orbits that aren't fully explained by their host's current size.

That extended mission, which is slated to end in September 2025, also extends to Jupiter's rings and many moons. Juno’s trajectory passes by Io every other orbit, flying over the same part of ...

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, has long intrigued scientists seeking to understand its mysterious origins. Recently, researchers uncovered groundbreaking details that shed fresh ...