NASA's Juno probe recently captured some stunning images of Jupiter and these photos of the gas giant showed a dark black entity on its surface. The image taken on September 12 seems so spooky in nature, and it soon went viral on online spaces.
After sharing the image, NASA clarified that the black entity is actually the shadow cast by Jupiter's moon Io.
NASA added that the Juno space probe was 8000 kilometers away from Jupiter while taking these images. This NASA spacecraft reached the Jovian system in July 2017, and it will end its mission in July 2021.
Even though the black shadow captured by NASA seems quite large, Io is only slightly larger than the earth's moon. In this image, Io appeared as a very large body due to an optical effect in which the total size of an object's shadow known as the penumbra increases with distance from the light source and in this case, it is the sun.
Io is the fourth-largest moon in the solar system, and it is the most volcanically active space body in the solar system. A few days back, researchers had revealed that the largest volcano in Jupiter's moon could erupt anytime soon. The research report suggested that Loki Patera, the 125-miles wide volcanic lake could erupt anytime, thus creating a lava flow in the surface of the space body.
A few months back, conspiracy theorists had spotted a mysterious green UFO hovering very close to the surface of the Jupiter. Conspiracy theorists spotted this weird body after analyzing an image released by NASA. However, experts claim that the green UFO-like object could be the result of an imaging sensor anomaly. As per these skeptics, the reflection of high energy particles hitting the sensors in sunlight might have caused this anomaly.
