NASA ’s Juno has recently performed some extremely closeflybys of Io , the innermost of the four Galilean lunar month of Jupiter . The rude planet is the most geologically participating torso in the Solar System , featuring 400 participating volcano . member of the Juno team have used data from recent encounters to restore some intriguing feature on the surface of Io .
Meet Loki Patera , the largest volcanic depression on Io . It is an tremendous lava lake . On Earth , it would be the 13th largest lake in the mankind . In the middle of the lake , there is an island rising from the Earth’s surface . That in itself is utmost but it ’s not even the weirdest feature of the lake .
Io is a volcanic hellscape but it has such a thin atmosphere that not even the lava can keep the place warm . The moon ’s control surface temperature is well below the freezing point of water – cold enough for the sulfur dioxide erupted in its volcanos to snow back down onto the Sun Myung Moon . So the lake ’s surface alternates between being liquid and being solid . And insights into the solid state came forthwith from Juno .
Unlike the manner we often picturelavato solidify on Earth , the surface of Loki Patera is not a grizzled smuggled rock . It is as still as glass , so more like obsidian , another volcanic mineral . And the whole control surface of the satellite might be equally smooth . It is certainly liquid than the other large moons of Jupiter with their cracked frigid control surface . However , there are some outlying features , quite literally in the case of the so - called Steeple Mountain .
“ Io is only littered with volcano , and we caught a few of them in action , ” Juno ’s master police detective Scott Bolton tell in astatement . “ We also got some dandy close - ups and other data on a 200 - kilometre - long ( 127 - nautical mile - long ) lava lake call Loki Patera . There is amazing item testify these half-baked islands embedded in the heart of a potentially magma lake rim with red-hot lava . The mirrorlike reflexion our instruments recorded of the lake suggest parts of Io ’s airfoil are as smooth as drinking glass , reminiscent of volcanically make obsidian glass on Earth . ”
Juno’smissionhas been extended significantly from the original plan as the ballistic capsule continue to do astonishing work . The delegacy team has been able to get a bit more avant-garde flying past the lunar month as well as unaired to the north pole of Jupiter than ever before . The observations are solving long - held mysteries about the standard atmosphere of Jupiter and how its storms move and develop .
Bolton award these and other Juno results during a tidings conference at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna .
