GANYMEDEAsia Tooke and Avery Morgan

Ganymede Physical Features

It is the largest satellite in our solar system with three whole layers: an iron, metallic core that generates its magnetic field, a rocky mantle, and its shell, which is chiefly composed of ice.

There is some Oxygen in the atmosphere, but it’s too thin to support life.

It’s lumpy! This means that there are probably rock formations beneath the ice.

Ganymede’s Bright Limb

Galileo Regio’s furrowed region

Ganymede Special Features

It’s forty percent cratered area, and sixty percent lightly grooved terrain from tensional faulting or release of water beneath the surface. Some grooves are up to 700 m high. The dark cratered area is probably the original crust of the satellite.

The craters are flat, probably because of the soft, icy ground.

Galileo Regio is the largest area on Ganymede.

Special Features

Khensu Crater Grooved terrain

Origin of the Name Galileo, at first, called the moons

numerically after the Medici family. In the mid-1800’s, Ganymede as well as the other Galilean moons were renamed so as to avoid confusion that could arise with naming the moons numerically.

Ganymede in Greek mythology was a very pretty boy that was disguised as an eagle by Zeus and brought to Mount Olympus to be the cupbearer of the Gods.

Magnetic Field

Triple Eclipse on Jupiter