Flybys of the planet Jupiter show what a lava lake and an imposing structure called ““Beetle Mountain” in the moon Io. NASA’s Juno probe, which first arrived to study Jupiter and its moons in 2016, flew about 1,500 km from the lava surface in December and February to capture the first detailed images of the northern latitude of Ioone of the planet’s moons.
The new discoveries were announced April 16 by Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton during a press conference at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna.
“Io is full of volcanoes and we captured some of them in action” Bolton said. “We also got other data from a 200 km long lava lake called Loki Patera,” he said.
There are surprising details that show these islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake surrounded by hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded in the lake suggests that parts of the moon’s surface are as smooth as glass.
Fascinating discoveries on Jupiter’s volcanic moon
Maps generated from data collected by the Juno spacecraft reveal that Io not only has a relatively smooth surface compared to Jupiter’s other Galilean moons, but also has colder poles than the middle latitudes.
Aside from Earth, Io is the only place where we see active magma volcanoes in our solar system.
Juno detected the mountain with the help of the Sun shining on the surface of Io, which helped create dramatic shadows that revealed a very sharp peak. This was called Campanario Mountain because it is very steep at the edge.
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Scientific data was used to understand shadows and measure distance. When the volcano explodes, magma comes out and freezes immediately, forming a kind of sulfurous snow. Although the temperature of the magma reaches thousands of degrees, The surface of the moon is around -100°C.
The story of the Moon Io
This was a moon of Jupiter first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, being only slightly larger than our Earth’s moon, but It’s like no other place in the solar system..
According to NASA, researchers observed Io’s powerful volcanoes spewing lava fountains tens of kilometers high which can be seen even with large telescopes on Earth.
The surface of the moon Io is covered by hundreds of volcanoes!
The moon’s name is derived from Greek mythology, in which a mortal woman is transformed into a cow during a marriage dispute between the god Zeus and his wife Hera. Similarly, the moon Io is in a constant state of tug of wardragged by the Jupiter’s enormous gravityas well as its large moons Europe and Ganymede.
The forces exerted on Io by Jupiter, Europa and Ganymede cause the surface of the moon to have an enormous amount of heat, so remains like a liquid rock. Researchers believe that liquid rock It is done of molten sulfur or silicate rockand volcanic eruptions help the moon relieve gravitational pressure.
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The moon Io has been studied by several spacecraft, including the Pioneer and Voyager probes in the 1970s and the Galileo probe in the 1990s. Now, the Juno mission is searching understand the forces behind the volcanic activity of the moon Io that previous missions were unable to unravel.
