NASA ships eclipse photos of Jupiter

NASA's Juno probe captures the moment when the Moon Io obscures the Sun, creating a shadow on the surface of a giant gas planet.

Kevin Gill, a software engineer at the US Space Agency (NASA), shares a shot of the moon Io printed on the surface of Jupiter on Twitter. The image taken by the Juno probe revealed a solar eclipse on the planet gas seen from orbit.

Solar eclipse on Jupiter.(Photo: NASA).

Io's shadow is much clearer than the Moon's shadow on Earth's surface during a solar eclipse. Experts explain the reason lies in the distance between Jupiter and the Sun."The sun is much smaller than when viewed from Jupiter, so the shadows become sharper," explains photographer Doug Ellison.

Io is so big and so close that it looks as much as four times the size of the Sun as seen from Jupiter, according to astrophysicist Katie Mack in North Carolina Geography. The distance between this moon and Jupiter is so small that the semi-dark region (formed around the edge of the shadow) is super thin.

Juno began orbiting Jupiter on July 5, 2016. Juno's task is to study the composition of Jupiter, and to assess the magnetosphere, gravitational field and polar magnetic field of the planet. NASA plans to let Juno continue studying Jupiter from orbit until July 2021, after which the ship will be driven into the planet's atmosphere to self-destruct.

Last year, Gill also shared a picture of giant storms sweeping the Southern Hemisphere of Jupiter. At the time of the photo, Juno was flying about 71,400 km from the top of the planet.