Exploring Io’s Lava Lake: NASA’s Stunning Animation Reveals Unique Features

A new look at Loki Patera’s lava lake © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

A trip to the volcanic moon: Those interested can now also see Jupiter’s moon Io from Earth. This is made possible by animations created by NASA scientists from data from probe flybys. The celestial body, known for its extremely active volcanism, features, among other things, a cooling lava lake and an unusual mountain.

Io is with Europa, Ganymede and Callisto one of the four great moons of Jupiter. They orbit the gas giant along with at least 88 other, much smaller, celestial bodies. Although Io is named after the mythical daughter of a river god, so many rule the moon volcanic activity like nowhere else in our solar system. Hundreds Volcanoes There are lava fountains that are sometimes dozens of kilometers high.

Fly over the lava lake

This “volcanic hell” sounds exciting and worth seeing, but it’s just not inviting. So that it is still possible to visit the scenes, NASA researchers have now created animations of Io’s surface for the first time. These are based on data from two flybys of the The Juno spacecraft in December 2023 and February 2024. On both occasions, Juno approached the volcanic moon within 1,500 kilometers and, among other things, took the first close-up images of Io’s northern latitudes.

“Io is full of volcanoes and we’ve seen some of them in action,” reports NASA’s Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton. “We also got some great close-up pictures and other data from a 200-kilometer-long lava lake called Loki Patera As you can see in the animation above, there are even several large islands in the middle of the cooling lake.

The “Church Tower Mountain” of Io can now be considered an animation. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Mirrors and church towers

But the lava lake reveals even more: “The specular reflection recorded by our instruments from the lake suggests that parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of obsidian glass that has been Volcanically formed on Earth,” Bolton added. This distinguishes Io from the other large moons in Jupiter, whose surfaces are considered much rougher.

Another sight that “tourists” will see on their virtual tour of Io is an unusual mountain that the team has nicknamed “Steeple Mountain”. The researchers refer to the narrow, steep and pointed shape of the massif, which makes it look like an exotic cathedral or fortress from “The Lord of the Rings”.

Using Juno’s microwave radiometer, Bolton and his colleagues were able to show that the poles of Io are significantly cooler than the mid-latitudes.

Source: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

April 24, 2024 – Anna Manz