Posted on 05/22/2011 5:24:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
[Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA] Explanation: What's happening on Jupiter's moon Io? Two sulfurous eruptions are visible on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io in this color composite image from the robotic Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003. At the image top, over Io's limb, a bluish plume rises about 140 kilometers above the surface of a volcanic caldera known as Pillan Patera. In the image middle, near the night/day shadow line, the ring shaped Prometheus plume is seen rising about 75 kilometers above Io while casting a shadow below the volcanic vent. Named for the Greek god who gave mortals fire, the Prometheus plume is visible in every image ever made of the region dating back to the Voyager flybys of 1979 - presenting the possibility that this plume has been continuously active for at least 18 years. The above digitally sharpened image of Io was originally recorded in 1997 from a distance of about 600,000 kilometers. Recent analyses of Galileo data has uncovered evidence of a magma ocean beneath Io's surface.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
Io: The Prometheus Plume -- sounds like a mystery/action novel.
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Ere ya startin up an APOD ping list by chance?
WOW!
Beautiful pic. Io is a most fascinating body.
Not the friendliest place but I’d still like to get a good look at the surface.
Looks like the top of Ed Asner’s head
Amazing picture
Beutiful pic!!!
IMO, the Moons of our Solar System are by far more fascinating than the planets.
That’s amazing. How can a volcano erupt continuously like that for at least 18 years? And why aren’t there enormous mountains at the sites of the plumes?
Oh wait. Maybe there are. I once read somewhere that if you blew your breath on a billiard ball and expanded the moistened ball to the size of the earth, it would have higher mountains and deeper oceans than the earth does. This photo is only about 3x the size of a billiard ball.
These plumes are new information to me, and it’s jaw dropping.
Another new Desktop!
Thanks!
doesnt look like a very dense atmosphere
Yeah, it’s back! The list will have to be rebuilt from scratch, previous pingmeister is unavailable.
Ya know - maybe we should prevail on Google to send its little street-grapher vehicles up there and give us a really good look at the neighborhoods. ;^)
Thank you SC.
Yeah, that will keep them too busy to promote zer0 and his leftist agenda for about five minutes.
Every little bit helps! Good idea. ;-)
:’)
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/io.htm
[Io] is the most volcanic body known, with lava flows, lava lakes, and giant calderas covering its sulfurous landscape. It has billowing volcanic geysers spewing sulfurous plumes to over 500 kilometers high. Its mountains are much taller than those on Earth, reaching heights of 16 kilometers (52,000 feet).
Solar System Exploration: Planets: Jupiter: Moons: Io
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Io
Although Io always points the same side toward Jupiter in its orbit around the giant planet, the large moons Europa and Ganymede perturb Io’s orbit into an irregularly elliptical one. Thus, in its widely varying distances from Jupiter, Io is subjected to tremendous tidal forces. These forces cause Io’s surface to bulge up and down (or in and out) by as much as 100 m (330 feet)! Compare these tides on Io’s solid surface to the tides on Earth’s oceans. On Earth, in the place where tides are highest, the difference between low and high tides is only 18 m (60 feet), and this is for water, not solid ground!
Jupiter’s Moon Io
Jason Perry
http://members.fortunecity.com/volcanopele/
Io is one of 28 moons of Jupiter. Io is also one of the largest at 3630 km in diameter, only Ganymede and Callisto are larger. Io is also extremely volcanic, with hundreds of active volcanoes on its surface at any given time. These volcanoes give rise to very hot lava flows as long as 500 km and gas/dust plumes that can reach heights of 400 km. In addition, Io has tremendously high mountains, which are not volcanoes, and tectonic faults that give rise to the mountains and volcanoes, as well as split the mountains apart. Io has a thin atmosphere consisting of sulfur dioxide mainly from plumes erupting from the volcanoes.
Internal Fire Bakes Jupiter’s Pizza Moon Io
Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 12 May 2011 Time: 02:01 PM ET
http://www.space.com/11647-jupiter-volcanic-moon-io-magma-ocean.html
Unlike Earth’s magma, which tends to cluster in pockets around the edges of tectonic plates, Io’s magma is found in a global reservoir at least 30 miles (48 kilometers) deep, the study suggests. This huge reserve of subsurface molten rock helps explain why Io is the most volcanically active object in the solar system, spewing out 100 times more lava than all of Earth’s volcanoes combined... Io, the third-largest of Jupiter’s many satellites, is just a touch bigger than Earth’s moon. It orbits about as close to Jupiter, on average, as our moon does to Earth. This proximity and Jupiter’s huge mass combine to wreak havoc on Io. Tidal forces pull hard on the moon, causing its rocky internal layers to rub against each other and melt from the friction-induced heat. This process produces magma, which then erupts in volcanoes... During four flybys of Io in 1999 and 2000, Galileo’s magnetometer picked up a strange signal coming from the moon. The signal was an induced response to the rotating magnetic field of Jupiter, and it was likely produced by an electrical current in Io’s subsurface rocks. That only makes sense, researchers say, if the moon has a global layer of molten or partially molten rock beneath its solid crust... Io’s magma ocean may be quashing the dynamo effect by nipping convection in the bud. Temperatures in this scorching slurry probably top 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius), researchers said, likely making Io’s mantle too hot to cool the moon’s core by convection
more images:
http://www.google.com/images?q=moon+io&sa=X&oi=image_result_group
Thank you, Civ. Very nice of you to do all that interesting research.
It does. It’s gorgeous....or, it looks like a moldy orange. I can’t decide which.
LOL I love that idea.
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