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On This Day In Space: March 4, 1979: Rings discovered around Jupiter!

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On This Day In Space: March 4, 1979: Rings discovered around Jupiter!_6404931729e3d.jpeg

On March 4, 1979, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft took the first photos of rings around Jupiter. This was the first time anyone had seen Jupiter’s rings. 

Because Jupiter’s rings are so thin and faint, it’s extremely difficult to see them from Earth with ground-based telescopes. Even for a spacecraft out near Jupiter, the rings are essentially invisible unless the cameras look at them edge-on or from an angle where sunlight shines directly through them.  

The star-tracker camera aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured this view of Jupiter’s faint rings on Aug. 27, 2016, during the probe’s first data-gathering close approach to the giant planet. It’s the first-ever view of the rings from inside of them. The bright star above the main ring is Betelgeuse, and Orion’s belt can be seen in the lower right. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI)

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Related stories:

 — Planet Jupiter: Facts about its size, moons and red spot
 —Target: Jupiter — 9 missions to the solar system’s largest planet
 — The greatest mysteries of Jupiter 

Since Voyager 1 first saw the rings, other space missions like Juno and Galileo have continued to study them. 

Scientists believe that the rings formed by comets colliding with Jupiter’s moons and kicking dust into the planet’s orbit.

On This Day in Space Archive!  

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