NASA reveals images of a lava lake on the planet Jupiter’s volcanic moon

Flights on the planet Jupiter show what a lava lake and an imposing structure called “Beetle Mountain” might look like on the moon Io. NASA’s Juno probe, which first arrived to study Jupiter and its moons in 2016, voor about 1,500 km from the lava surface in December and February to capture the first detailed images of Io’s northern latitudeone of the planet’s moons.

The new discoveries were announced on the 16th of this monthby Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton, during a press conference at the General Assembly of the European Geophysical Union in Vienna.

Io is just full of volcanoes and we captured some of them in action,” said Bolton. We also got other data from a 200 km long lava lake called Loki Patera

There are surprising details that show these islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake surrounded by hot lava. The specular reflection that our instruments recorded in the lake suggests that parts of the moon’s surface are as smooth as glass.

Fascinating discoveries on Jupiter’s volcanic moon

Maps generated with data collected by the Juno probe reveal that Io not only has a surface relatively smooth compared to other Galilean moons of Jupiterbut also has cooler poles than mid-latitudes.

Other than Earth, it is the only place where we see active magma volcanoes in our solar system.

Juno detected the mountain with the help of the sun shining on Io’s surface, which helped create dramatic shadows that revealed a very sharp peak. This was called Steeple Mountain, as it is very steep at the edge.

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Scientific data was used to understand shadows and measure distance. When the volcano explodes the magma comes out and freezes immediately, forming a kind of sulfurous snow. Although the temperature of the magma reaches thousands of degrees, the moon’s surface is around Negative 100°C.

The story of the Moon Io

This was a moon of Jupiter first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, being only slightly larger than our Earth’s moonbut it is unlike anywhere else in the solar system.

The surface of the moon Io is covered in hundreds of volcanoes!

According to NASA, researchers observed Io’s powerful volcanoes spewing fountains of lava tens of kilometers high and can even be seen with large telescopes on Earth.

The name of the moon is derived from a Greek mythin which a mortal woman is transformed into a cow during a marital dispute between the god Zeus and his wife Hera. Similarly, the moon Io is in a constant state of tug of war, pulled by Jupiter’s enormous gravity.as well as its large moons Europa and Ganymede.

The forces exerted on Io by Jupiter, Europa and Ganymede cause the moon’s surface to possess an enormous amount of heat., which is why it remains like a liquid rock. Researchers believe that liquid rock is made of molten sulfur or silicate rock, and volcanic eruptions help the moon to alleviate the gravitational pressure.

Thereua Io has been studied by several spacecraftincluding the Pioneer and Voyager probes in the 1970s and the Galileo probe in the 1990s. Now, Juno’s mission seeks to understand the forces behind volcanic activity of the moon Io that previous missions were unable to unravel.