Nasa spacecraft snaps stunning close up images of eruptions on Solar System’s most volcanic place

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Nasa’s Juno spacecraft has snapped new images of Jupiter’s third largest moon Io, revealing stunning particulars of the volcanic exercise on the moon’s floor.

The high-resolution images have been taken final week when the Juno spacecraft made an ultra-close flyby of Io – the closest any probe has come to the Solar System’s most volcanic world in over twenty years.

Juno had beforehand come this close to Io on 30 December, 2023, when it got here inside about 1,500km (930miles) of Io’s floor.

The newest passby occurred over the southern hemisphere of Io, whereas Juno’s prior flybys have been over the north.

The solely different time when any spacecraft had come this close to Io was in 2001 when Nasa’s Galileo probe happened 180 km close to Io’s south pole.

“The JunoCam instrument aboard our Juno Mission acquired six images of Jupiter’s moon Io during its close encounter today. This black-and-white view was taken at an altitude of about 1,500 miles,” Nasa posted on X after the 30 December flyby.

Nasa’s new images reveal stark particulars of the Io’s volcanic floor, together with twin energetic plumes, which both symbolize “two vents from one giant volcano, or two volcanoes near each other.”

The newest images additionally present indicators of lava lakes, some with obvious islands, on Io.

“By combining data from this flyby with our previous observations, the Juno science team is studying how Io’s volcanoes vary,” Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator, stated in an announcement.

The intense volcanic exercise on Io is as a result of gravitational pull of Jupiter – the most large planet in our photo voltaic system – in addition to the pressure exerted by the planet’s different moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

The push and pull forces of Jupiter and its different moons on Io are so immense its floor rises and drops by extremes as a lot as 100 m (330 ft), researchers say.

Infact, Io’s floor will get its orange and yellow hues as a result of moon’s volcanoes continuously emitting sulfur and different compounds.

While Io is nearly the scale of Earth’s Moon, scientists say the Jupiter moon could seem totally different day-after-day as a consequence of fixed eruptions on its floor.

By analysing the brand new images additional, astronomers hope to achieve additional perception into how Io’s volcanoes work, and whether or not there’s a world magma ocean below the Jupiter moon’s rocky floor.

“We are looking for how often they erupt, how bright and hot they are, how the shape of the lava flow changes, and how Io’s activity is connected to the flow of charged particles in Jupiter’s magnetosphere,” Dr Bolton added.