This extraterrestrial photoshoot was 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 chronicle the massive planet and its up to 95 officially recognized moons, photographed active volcanoes spewing huge plumes of debris into its very thin sulfur dioxide atmosphere.
Stunning images of the cratered moon and its hundreds of volcanoes and lava lakes can be seen in a gallery published on Sky & Telescope.
Juno, the first solar-powered mission in the outer solar system, had made a similar approach to the innermost moon of Galilee in December, and its final pass occurred in its 58th circle of the huge planet, during which it had captured the first mission. never images of the north and south poles, NASA said.
The spacecraft was scheduled to fly seven more times from greater distances before the end of its mission, which monitored Jupiter’s magnetic field and interior from afar before recently approaching 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 the surface of the lo. 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 volcanoes vary,” Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio said in a statement. NASA press release last month.
“We’re looking at how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are, how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how Io’s activity is related to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere.”
Scientists were also looking at the “importance of Jupiter’s tidal forces, which are relentlessly squeezing this tortured moon,” Bolton said.
The spacecraft’s JunoCam suffered radiation exposure during its last close pass of the planet, which was manipulated by engineers who used internal heaters in the camera to warm it.
In this JunoCam shot from October, a column over the location of the Prometheus volcano can be seen sticking out of the darkness on the left side of the image, just below the terminator (the line that divides day and night). NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
It is slightly larger than Earth’s moon and has surface temperatures of negative 202 degrees, but its interior is heated by the tidal forces of Jupiter’s enormous gravitational field, fueling volcanoes that can exceed 3,000 degrees, according to Space.com. .
Its volcanoes spew charged particles into a region of higher concentration of ions and electrons located in the orbit of Io, Io’s plasma torus, which connects back to the planet through magnetic field lines.
The celestial body orbits Jupiter in less than two Earth days, but does not rotate because it is locked by the planet’s tides.
Juno’s last passes were not the closest to the Moon: the Galileo mission reportedly came within 112 miles of the Moon in 2001.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn