NASA's Juno mission has revealed a colossal volcanic hot spot on Io, Jupiter's most volcanically active moon. This massive feature, larger than Earth's Lake Superior, emits eruptions six times the energy of all the world's power plants. Discovered using Juno's Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), the hot spot is believed to be fueled by Jupiter's intense gravitational forces, which relentlessly squeeze Io, generating immense frictional heat and triggering volcanic activity.
8 min readA massive hotspot — larger the Earth’s Lake Superior — can be seen just to the right of Io’s south pole in this annotated image taken by the JIRAM infrared imager aboard NASA ’s Juno on Dec. 27, 2024, during the spacecraft’s flyby of the Jovian moon.Even by the standards of Io, the most volcanic celestial body in the solar system, recent events observed on the Jovian moon are extreme.
The source of Io’s torment: Jupiter. About the size of Earth’s Moon, Io is extremely close to the mammoth gas giant, and its elliptical orbit whips it around Jupiter once every 42.5 hours. As the distance varies, so does the planet’s gravitational pull, which leads to the moon being relentlessly squeezed.
The JIRAM science team estimates the as-yet-unnamed feature spans 40,000 square miles . The previous record holder was Io’s, a lava lake of about 7,700 square miles . The total power value of the new hot spot’s radiance measured well above 80 trillion watts.The feature was also captured by the mission’s JunoCam visible light camera. The team compared JunoCam images from the two previous Io flybys with those the instrument collected on Dec. 27.
VOLCANISM Io JUPITER NASA JUNO Volcanic Eruptions PLANETS SPACE EXPLORATION
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