Shepherd Moons

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The New Horizons spacecraft took the best images of Jupiter’s charcoal-black rings as it approached and then looked back at Jupiter in February 2007. This sequence of pictures from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) shows the well-defined lanes of gravel- to boulder-sized material composing the bulk of the rings; labels point out how these narrow rings are confined in their orbits by small “shepherding” moons (Metis and Adrastea).

Release Date: May 1, 2007

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute