It’s not a large moon compared to some of its neighbors, but Jupiter’s Io is notably active, with hundreds of volcanoes spewing lava. plumes dozens of miles on its surface, according to NASA. Infrared technology aboard the space agency’s Juno probe mapped two such eruptions in February, yielding valuable data about what’s happening beneath Io’s surface. The researchers shared their knowledge about a paper published last week.
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About 2,400 miles away, the probe’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument “revealed that the entire surface of Io is covered by lava lakes contained in caldera-like formations,” explained Alessandro Mura, co-investigator of Juno from the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. The caldera is a crater formed by a collapsing volcano. Io is slightly larger than Earth’s moon and about a quarter the size. from the earth.
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According to Mura, lead author of the aforementioned paper, the probe’s flybys expose the most common type of volcanism on Jupiter’s hottest moon: huge lava lakes where magma rises and falls.” He added: “The lava crust is forced to break against the lake walls, forming the typical lava ring seen in Hawaiian lava lakes. “The walls are probably hundreds of meters high, which explains why magma is not generally observed spilling out.”
Researchers are still poring over data collected by Juno’s flybys of Io, which occurred in February 2024 and December 2023.
Researchers are still poring over the data collected by Juno’s Io flybys, which occurred in February 2024 and December 2023.
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