NASA's Hubble Space Telescope caught a rare view of three of Jupiter's moons whizzing in front of the planet.
The phenomenon was captured in a series of stunning crystal-clear images, Hubble reported. The moons caught in the photographs were Europa, Callisto and Io.
"Firing off a string of snapshots like a sports photographer at a NASCAR race, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a rare look at three of Jupiter's largest moons zipping across the banded face of the gas-giant planet..." NASA's Hubble site stated.
It's not uncommon for NASA scientists to get a glimpse of one of Jupiter's four largest moons transiting the face of the planet, but the real treat here is to see three moons traversing our view of Jupiter at the same time; this phenomenon has only occurs about once or twice a decade.
The moon Ganymede is missing from the photographed sequence because the image taken on Jan. 24, 2015, was too far from Jupiter in angular separation to be part of the conjunction.
"These images are composites of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Several filters were used to sample narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter," NASA's Hubble site stated.
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