This space photo shoot is far from lo-fi.
NASA’s Juno mission passed within 930 miles of Jupiter’s third largest volcanic moon on Saturday, capturing stunning images of the most volcanic world in our solar system.
The spacecraft, in the third year of its mission to chart the giant planet and its officially recognized moon for up to 95 years, captured images of an active volcano spewing huge debris into its ultra-thin atmosphere of sulfur dioxide.
Images of the heavily cratered moon and hundreds of volcanoes and lava lakes can be seen in a gallery published in Sky & Telescope.
Juno – the first solar-powered mission in the outer solar system – made a close approach to the innermost Galilean moon in December, and its latest pass came on the giant planet’s 58th orbit, where it captured its first-ever image. north and south poles lo, said NASA.
The spacecraft is expected to fly by seven more times at greater distances before the end of its mission, which monitored Jupiter’s magnetic field and interior from afar before recently moving closer to the gas giant.
This image shows the night side of Io illuminated by sunlight reflected from Jupiter’s cloud tops. NASA/SwRI/JPL/MSSS/Jason Perry © CC NC SA Lava fountains can spew volcanic material tens of miles into the air from lo surface. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/AndreaLuck
“By combining data from this flyby with our previous observations, the Juno science team is studying how Io’s volcanism varies,” Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said in a NASA press release last month.
“We’re looking at how often it erupts, how bright and hot it is, how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how Io’s activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”
Scientists also observed “the importance of tidal forces from Jupiter, which relentlessly squeeze this tortured moon,” Bolton said.
The spacecraft’s JunoCam suffered radiation exposure during its last close pass of the planet, which was operated by engineers who used an internal heater on the camera to warm it up.
In this JunoCam shot from October, the plume above the location of the Prometheus volcano can be seen just sticking out of the darkness on the left side of the image, just below the terminator (the line separating day and night). NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
lo is slightly larger than Earth’s moon, and has a negative surface temperature of 202 degrees, but its interior is heated by the tidal forces of Jupiter’s massive gravitational field, burning volcanoes that can exceed 3,000 degrees, according to Space.com.
Its volcano spews charged particles into regions of higher concentration of ions and electrons located in Io’s orbit of Io’s plasma torus, which connect back to the planet via magnetic field lines.
The spacecraft orbits Jupiter in less than two Earth days but does not rotate, because it is tidally locked to the planet.
Juno’s latest pass isn’t the closest the spacecraft has ever seen — the Galileo mission reportedly came within 112 miles of the moon in 2001.
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