Restored Pictures of Ganymede, Moon of Jupiter

Abstract

Restored pictures of Ganymede have been produced that have some identifiably reliable features and some identifiable artifacts. The latter arise from artifacts in parts of the red image data. Among the presumably reliable features are some mare-like objects (perhaps with some internal structure), and a few rather large, bright rings. Whether the latter are ice, or arise from near-specular reflection from smooth surface features, is left for future investigation. One of the restoring methods used, maximum entropy, has been shown to be applicable to moderately extended images. In view of its short time requirements (30 seconds per picture), the method should be applicable to moderately larger images, for example with twice the given number of data points.