Photo: NASA/Getty Images
For: The opinion
Perhaps you had not thought about it, but on other planets and moons of the solar system there are also volcanic eruptions and recently a large volcanic eruption was discovered on one of Jupiter’s satellites.
researchers of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) of the USA have observed a recent moonburst Io of Jupiter using PSI’s Io Input/Output (IoIO) observatory.
Jeff Morgenthaler, Principal Scientist at PSI, was the one who discovered a large volcanic eruption on the moon Iowhich is considered a hellish place due to the number of volcanic eruptions it records each year.
As reported by the PSI, Morgenthaler, has been using IoIO to monitor volcanic activity on Io, since 2017, time in which it has seen observations showing some sort of outburst almost every year, but the largest so far was observed in the fall of 2022.
The IoIO observatory, adds the PSI, uses a coronagraphic technique that dims the light coming from Jupiter to enable imaging of the faint gases close to the bright planet. The glow of two of these gases, sodium and ionized sulfur, began between July and September 2022 and lasted until December 2022.
Ionized sulfur, which forms a donut-like structure surrounding Jupiter and is called Io’s plasma torus, interestingly I wasn’t that bright in this burst as seen previously.
“This could be telling us something about the composition of volcanic activity that produced the outburst or it could be telling us that the torus is more efficient at getting rid of material when more material is dumped into it,” Morgenthaler said.
Future approach to Io
The PSI considers that these observations have profound implications for the Juno mission NASA, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, because Juno flew past Europa during the outburst and is gradually approaching Io for a close flyby in December 2023.
Several of the Juno instruments are sensitive to changes in the plasma environment around Jupiter and Io that can be traced directly to the type of volcanic activity observed by IoIO.
Io is the innermost of Jupiter’s four large moons. and it is the most volcanic body in the Solar System thanks to the tidal stresses it feels from Jupiter and two of its other large satellites, Europa and Ganymede.
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