Saturday, June 1, 2024

We knew Io had volcanoes

 

Evers since the Voyager mission reached Jupiter, we've known that the pizza-faced moon Io had volcanoes. Now, the Juno probe (still working) has revealed it also has a lava lake.

Perhaps not a big surprise, given the volcanic activity that's all over the moon, but still, interesting to know.

The lake is located at the volcano named Loki Patera.

Juno Reveals a Giant Lava Lake on Io

" “Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton during a news conference at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. “There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.” "



One way to tell that Io has a lava lake is that it's where the heat flow on the moon is the highest, as shown in this image.



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