Jupiter’s ocean moons seize most of our consideration due to their potential habitability. However Io, Jupiter’s bad-boy volcanic moon, is in a category of its personal. There’s nothing else prefer it within the Photo voltaic System, and NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured new photographs of the volcanic satellite tv for pc throughout its closest method but.
Io is Jupiter’s third-largest moon and the Photo voltaic System’s fourth largest moon. It’s additionally bigger than our Moon. It has the best density and the strongest gravity of any moon. Io additionally has the least quantity of water of any astronomical object within the Photo voltaic System.
These traits alone make it fascinating. However what actually garners Io a lot consideration, and led Juno to check it extra carefully, is its volcanic exercise. It’s probably the most geologically energetic physique within the Photo voltaic System and boasts over 400 volcanoes, together with widespread lava flows.
Juno’s JunoCam instrument captured new photographs of Io from its closest method but on October fifteenth, from lower than 12,000 km away. Now, citizen scientists have processed these photographs and shared them with the remainder of us. The result’s the perfect photographs of Io we’ve seen because the Galileo mission ended 20 years in the past.
Now we have NASA’s foresight to thank for these photographs. Once they had been planning the Juno mission, they discovered room for JunoCam. JunoCam is primarily a public engagement instrument, although it does assist present context for the spacecraft’s extra rigorous science devices. The digicam was supposed to seize photographs for citizen scientists and different expert—or novice—picture processors to have fun with.
It’s working as supposed.
Io’s widespread volcanic exercise have formed and reshaped its floor. The floor is stressed, inhospitable, even tortured. The lava flows and volcanoes make it seem like a throwback to the Photo voltaic System’s early days, when Earth and probably the Moon and different our bodies had been magma oceans. And with it’s sulfur-covered plains, comparisons with Hell are unavoidable.
Spacecraft have captured a number of of Io’s eruptions over time, and their scale is actually superior. A few of them attain 400 km (250 miles) excessive.
Only for enjoyable, right here’s a Juno infrared picture exhibiting the moon’s intensive volcanic exercise.
Juno’s not completed with Io but. It’s getting progressively nearer to the volcanic moon. Throughout Perijoves 57 and 58, on December third and February twenty fourth respectively, it’ll carry out two extra Io flybys, every one nearer than the final.
February twenty fourth’s flyby must be spectacular. It’ll come to inside 1500 km (930 miles) of the moon, giving us our most detailed photographs but. Although Juno’s essential job is to check Jupiter, this shut method to Io must be one of many mission’s highlights.
You would circle the date in your calendar, however that’s most likely not obligatory. It’ll be tough to go on the internet with out seeing the photographs.
