Volcanic Activity on Jupiter’s Moon Io Discovered by Large Binocular Telescope

how to use SHARK-VIS device Using the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham in Arizona, US, astronomers have captured the highest-resolution optical images of Io ever taken by a ground-based telescope. The new images allow the astronomers to confirm that large-scale surface changes are occurring around Pele, one of Io's most well-known volcanoes.

Io is slightly larger than Earth's Moon and is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.

It is the innermost of Jupiter's Galilean moons, which besides Io include Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Io is caught in a gravitational tug-of-war between Jupiter, Europa, and Ganymede, and is constantly compressed, causing frictional heat to build up inside it, which is thought to be the cause of sustained and widespread volcanic activity.

By monitoring Io's surface eruptions, planetary scientists hope to gain insight into the thermal movement of material beneath the moon's surface, its internal structure, and ultimately the mechanisms of tidal heating that drive Io's intense volcanic activity.

Io's volcanic activity was first discovered in 1979, when Linda Morabito, an engineer for NASA's Voyager missions, spotted plumes of smoke in one of the images the spacecraft took during its famous Grand Tour of the outer planets.

Since then, countless observations have been made, both from space and from telescopes on Earth, documenting Io's restless nature.

“Io offers a unique opportunity to learn about the powerful eruptions that contributed to shaping the surfaces of the Earth and Moon long ago,” said Dr Al Conrad, an astronomer at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory.

The new images, taken with the large binocular telescope SHARK-VIS, are so detailed that they enabled the team to identify a major resurfacing event in which the plume deposits around a prominent volcano known as Pele, located near the equator in Io's southern hemisphere, have been covered by eruption deposits from a neighboring volcano, Piran Patera.

A similar series of eruptions was observed by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which explored the Jovian system from 1995 to 2003.

“We interpret this change as dark lava deposits and white sulfur dioxide deposits from the Piran Patera eruption partially covering Pele's red sulfur-rich plume deposits,” said Dr. Ashley Davis, principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“Before SHARK-VIS, it was impossible to observe these resurfacing events from Earth.”

“The visible light images are absolutely stunning,” said Imke de Patter, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Pele appears to be erupting continuously, spewing plumes of volcanic gases about 300 kilometers above Io's surface, high enough to have been photographed by Voyager, Galileo and Hubble.”

“Gases in the plume erupting from the lava lake freeze and are deposited on the surface as a conspicuous, wide, reddish, sulfur-rich ring.”

“Piran Patera, on the other hand, appears to erupt intermittently, leaving lava surrounded by a white ring of frozen sulfur dioxide.”

“The new images show that the white sediments obscure Pele's reddish sediments, but perhaps only for a short time.”

“Images of Io taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft in April 2024 will show a nearly perfect orange ring, with perhaps a faint hint of red where the Piran deposits were located.”

“It's like a race between Piram and Pele to see how much and how fast each can deposit.”

“Once Piran stops completely, it will be covered again with Pele's red deposits.”

of Investigation result It will be displayed in journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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Al Conrad othersIn 2024, LBT SHARK-VIS observes a large-scale re-emergence event on Io. arXiv: 2405.19604