Relationship With Jupiter's Rings
Adrastea is the largest contributor to material in Jupiter's rings. This appears to consist primarily of material that is ejected from the surfaces of Jupiter's four small inner satellites by meteorite impacts. It is easy for the impact ejecta to be lost from these satellites into space. This is due to the satellites' low density and their surfaces lying close to the edge of their Roche spheres.
It seems that Adrastea is the most copious source of this ring material, as evidenced by the densest ring (the Main Ring) being located at and within Adrastea's orbit. More precisely, the orbit of Adrastea lies near the outer edge of Jupiter's Main Ring. The exact extent of visible ring material depends on the phase angle of the images: in forward-scattered light Adrastea is firmly outside the Main Ring, but in back-scattered light (which reveals much bigger particles) there appears to also be a narrow ringlet outside Adrastea's orbit.
Read more about this topic: Adrastea (moon)
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