Science, Space and Technology News 2024
Created using data collected by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, this animation is an artist’s concept that shows an aerial view of Loki Patera, a lava lake on the Jovian moon Io. The 124-mile-long lake is filled with magma, rimmed with hot lava, and dotted with islands. Loki provided a spectacular reflection when imaged by JunoCam during flybys of the moon in December 2023 and February 2024, suggesting it and other parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass.
“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” said Bolton. “We also got some great close-ups and other data on a 200-kilometer-long lava lake called Loki Patera. There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.
“Perhaps most striking example of this disparity can be found with the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” said Steve Levin, Juno’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms. This tells us that its subsurface structure must be very different from these other cyclones.
In 1995, NASA’s Galileo probe provided an early dataset on Jupiter’s water abundance during the spacecraft’s 57-minute descent into the Jovian atmosphere. But the data created more questions than answers, indicating the gas giant’s atmosphere was unexpectedly hot and — contrary to what computer models had indicated — bereft of water.
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