NASA announced Monday that one of the instruments aboard the Juno spacecraft captured the small inner moon Almathea during its 59th flyby of Jupiter on March 7. Discovered by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in 1892, Amalthea is located 180,000 kilometers from the gas giant. According to NASA, this celestial body, which has a radius of 84 kilometers, rotates around Jupiter every 0.5 days, on the inside path relative to the orbit of the moon Io. One of the characteristics of Almatea is that it is the object ”redder” of the solar system and appears to give off more heat than it receives from the Sun. This could be due to the fact that, as the Galilean satellite orbits around Jupiter’s magnetic field, electric currents are induced. Another hypothesis is that the heat emitted by the Moon is the result of tidal forces.
In 1999, NASA’s Galileo space probe revealed some features of Almatea’s surface, including impact craters, hills and valleys. On the portal, the experts explained that, in the images taken by the device, it is possible to notice the irregular shape of the object, very similar to the moon Deimos on Mars.
