Shadow of Jupiter's largest moon looms in magnificent new Juno photo - Space.com

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Giant Jupiter and the shadow of its biggest moon, Ganymede, dominate the view in this latest image from the system based on a NASA spacecraft's data.

NASA's Juno mission whizzed close by the radiation-spewing planet for the 40th time on Feb. 25, with the resulting raw images of the encounter beamed home to Earth. There, citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos created this stunning view based on what was seen by the JunoCam instrument.

Juno was flying roughly 44,000 miles (71,000 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops during the encounter, which is roughly 15 times closer than Ganymede's orbital distance of 666,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers), NASA stated.

If an observer could brave the radiation to float within the oval seen in the picture, NASA added, that person would experience a total eclipse of the sun. "Total eclipses are more common on Jupiter than Earth," the agency said, noting the planet hosts four large moons (Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto) that orbit closer to the plane of Jupiter than our own, singular moon.

JunoCam, the agency said, "captured this image from very close to Jupiter, making Ganymede's shadow appear especially large."