Jupiter's Rings 

When Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter, an unexpected finding of a ring system on Jupiter astounded scientists. The rings are much simpler and fainter then that of Saturn's, composed of an inner halo, a main ring and a Gossamer ring. Also, the rings are much darker than Saturn's (with an albedo of about 0.5) and contain no ice. Jupiter's ring is constantly being replenished due to the dust kicked up by the micrometeor impacts on the four inner moons.

The Gossamer Ring

At first, the images from the Voyager spacecraft showed the Gossamer ring to be a single ring, however, the Galileo probe's imaging provided clear evidence that it is really comprised of two rings: one ring in the other. The innermost ring is called the Amalthea Gossamer ring and it extends from the orbit of Adrastea to the orbit of Amalthea, a total distance of 181,000 kilometers (112,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. The other ring, called the Thebe Gossamer ring extends from Amalthea's orbit to Thebe's orbit at a distance of 221,000 kilometers (136,000 miles).

Both rings are extremely thing and are composed of debris shot into space from meteorite impact from the inner moons of Jupiter: Metis, Adrastea, Thebe, and Amalthea.

The Main Ring

The Main Ring is the brightest ring and extends out beyond the inner halo out and just inside of the orbit of Adrastea to an approximate distance of 128,940 kilometers (80,000 miles). The ring's brightness decreases close to the orbit of Metis.

The Inner Halo

The innermost halo ring is composed of fine dust particles from the main ring's inner boundary and its radius extends 92,000 kilometers (57,000 miles) to about 122,500 kilometers (76,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. This ring also is widened due to its interactions with Jupiter's large magnetic field.