Jupiter’s four largest moons are no longer just blurry specks in Galileo’s telescope.
The Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered Ganymede, Callisto, Europe and Io in 1610, which explains why they are called the Galilean moons. We’ve learned a lot about these exotic bodies over the past 400 years, thanks to ever-improving observations from telescopes and close-up images taken by traveling spacecraft like NASA’s. Juno Jupiter Orbiter.
In fact, Juno recently conducted two close flybys of Ithe most volcanically active body in the world solar systemand data from the encounters are impressing scientists.
Related: NASA’s Juno probe sees active volcanic eruptions on Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io (images)
“Io is simply packed with volcanoes, and we captured some of them in action,” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator, in a statement. NASA statement on Thursday (April 18).
“We also got great close-ups and other data from a 200-kilometer-long lava lake called Loki Patera,” Bolton added. “There are surprising details that show these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake surrounded by hot lava. The specular reflection that our instruments have recorded in the lake suggests that parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of glass from obsidian created volcanically on Earth.”
Juno came within about 1,500 kilometers of Io’s turbulent surface during the two flybys, which took place in December 2023 and February 2024. Mission team members processed the encounter data into a flyby animation, which provides a stunning view. from the moon.
Newly created maps using Juno data also showed that Io’s surface is smoother than others. Moons of Galileeand that Io’s poles are colder than mid-latitude regions, mission team members said.
Jupiter too
Juno also collected intriguing information about the poles of Jupiter recently using its Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument, including differences between the gas giant’s intriguing north polar cyclones.
“Perhaps [the] The most striking example of this disparity can be found in the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” said Steve Levin, Juno project scientist at the NASA Research Center. Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, it said in the same statement.
“It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms,” Levin added. “This tells us that its underground structure must be very different from these other cyclones.”
The Juno team is also learning more about Jupiter’s abundance of water. Scientists are not looking for lakes and flowing rivers – after all, Jupiter has no discernible surface – but rather for oxygen and hydrogen molecules in its thick atmosphere. This work follows that done by NASA Galileo Jupiter Orbiterwhich ended its mission with an intentional death dive into Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1995.
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Galileo “did incredible science, but his data was so far removed from our models of water abundance on Jupiter that we considered whether the site he sampled might be an exception. But before Juno, we couldn’t confirm,” Bolton said. “Now, with recent results obtained from MWR data, we conclude that the abundance of water near Jupiter’s equator is about three to four times the solar abundance when compared to hydrogen. This definitively demonstrates that the Galileo probe entry site was an abnormally dry, desert region.”
Although there are still many questions about how Jupiter formed, scientists continue to rely on data from Juno’s expanded mission. The probe’s next flyby of Jupiter – its 61st in total – will be on May 12.
