Titanic volcanic eruption seen on Io [Photos r too cool for school]

The new scientist ^ | 11/14/02

[1bigdictator]

Titanic volcanic eruption seen on Io

14:50 14 November 02

NewScientist.com news service

A titanic volcanic eruption has been spotted on the surface of Jupiter's volatile moon Io using a telescope back on Earth. Astronomers believe it to be the most powerful eruption ever witnessed in the entire Solar System.... [see link for photos].

[GaltMeister]

"The volcano is far more powerful than any eruption recorded by scientists on Earth, with an estimated power output of about 78,000 gigawatts. By comparison, the power produced by the last significant eruption of Mount Etna in Italy in 1992 was just 12 gigawatts."

Wow ... we are talking some serious energy released on that little moon!

[1bigdictator]

Something of that magnitude on Earth would probably lead to total extinction of all life... or at least another long ice age.

[perfect stranger]

[rmlew]

It's a giant ZIT!

[RightWhale]

The reason this is too kool is that it was imaged with a ground-based telescope. Keck II on Hawaii with adaptive optics. Io used to be either a dot in the big telescope or a satellite image. New stuff.

[sarasmom]

ping-you like this sort of thing, right?

Cool.

[aruanan]

"The volcano is far more powerful than any eruption recorded by scientists on Earth, with an estimated power output of about 78,000 gigawatts. By comparison, the power produced by the last significant eruption of Mount Etna in Italy in 1992 was just 12 gigawatts."

How many gigawatts did it take for the flux capacitor to power the DeLorean back to the future? Was it 1.2 gigawatts?

[fone]

||| Something of that magnitude on Earth would probably lead to total extinction of all life... or at least another long ice age |||

Worse than that, the FR server would definitely go down =-(

[Gone_Postal]

Hilliary has gas

[germanicus]

I don't know if IO has an atmosphere or not but this could cause some major global warming.

[krizzy]

That would be 1.21 gigawatts

[FreedomCalls]

It looks to me like a meteor impacting the surface rather than a volcano erupting. You can see the black ejecta around the impact point where the hot lava is left behind.

[GaltMeister]

I don't know if IO has an atmosphere or not but this could cause some major global warming.

Uh-Oh ... we better not let AlBore find out about this, or there's hell to pay...

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Titanic volcanic eruption seen on Io

Women, minorities, and black monoliths hit hardest.

[MHGinTN]

This looks series. Poor little Io, so close to Jupiter, so much grabitational tension!

[Senator Pardek]

...adaptive optics...

By what it's called, I assume it's done in real-time (and done physically). I have audio software that removes noise (by first sampling the noise by itself and then removing it from the signal) but it's "after the fact".

Can you explain to a layman like myself how adaptive optics work? Seems Herculean to me.

[perfect stranger]

Dictionary.com-
" e·jec·ta Pronunciation Key (-jkt) pl.n. Ejected matter, as that from an erupting volcano."

I see your point and raise you the credibility of the source.

[RightWhale]

It is really on the edge of technology. The mirror is segmented in several parts, each piece is mounted separately and can be aligned separately under automatic control. This can be used to cancel out atmospherics such as heat waves. Small telescopes have better resolution for their size because of atmospherics, and this system is essentially several smaller telescopes together. Net result, small aperture resolution with large aperature light gathering capability.

[aruanan]

Thanks!