THE Jupiter’s moon Io is considered the most geologically active place in our solar system, and researchers have discovered a new giant volcano on the surface of the satellite.
The volcano, located south of Io’s equator, features multiple lava flows and covers an area more than 180 km (110 miles) across. It was captured in images from the JunoCam on NASA’s Juno mission, which were presented at the Europlanet Science Congress in Berlin this week.
Images taken during NASA’s Galileo mission in 1997 show that a few decades ago the site had no active volcanoes. “Our recent JunoCam images show many changes on Io, including this large and complicated volcanic formation,” said Michael Ravine, advanced project manager for Malin Space Science Systems, Inc., which designed, developed and operates JunoCam.
In the photo, you can see that the eastern side of the volcano has a red stain due to the sulfur that was expelled. On the western side, two dark lava flows run for about a hundred kilometers. At the ends of these flows, the lava accumulated and the heat caused the frozen material on the surface to turn into vapor, creating two gray areas.
This content was originally published in Researchers discover new giant volcano on one of Jupiter’s moons on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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