“These new events are in a relatively rare class of eruptions on Io because of their size and astonishingly high thermal emission,” he said.
Because of Io’s low gravity, large volcanic eruptions produce an umbrella of debris that rises high into space.ĭe Pater’s long-time colleague and coauthor Ashley Davies, a volcanologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said that the recent eruptions match past events that spewed tens of cubic miles of lava over hundreds of square miles in a short period of time. It also is the only body in the solar system with volcanoes erupting extremely hot lava like that seen on Earth. Io (pronounced ee-o or eye-o), the innermost of Jupiter’s four large “Galilean” moons, is about 2,300 miles across and the most volcanically active planet or moon in our solar system. Image by Imke de Pater and Katherine de Kleer, UC Berkeley. This hot spot was identified as Loki Patera, a lava lake that appeared to be particularly active at the same time. A second bright spot is visible to the north of the Rarog and Heno eruptions in c and to the west of the outburst in d. 15 at Rarog and Heno Paterae have substantially faded by Aug. Note that emissions from the large volcanic outbursts on Aug.
The bar on the right of each image indicates the intensity of the infrared emission.
15, 2013 (a-c) and the Gemini North telescope on Aug. Keck Observatory’s 10-meter Keck II telescope on Aug. Images of Io obtained at different infrared wavelengths (in microns, μm, or millionths of a meter) with the W.
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