Stunning New NASA Pic Reveals Lava Glowing Red Hot on Jupiter's Moon - ScienceAlert

NASA's Juno spacecraft captured an infrared image of Jupiter's satellite Io from 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) away.

In the image, taken connected July 5 and released connected Wednesday, you tin spot the shapes of lava flows and lava lakes arsenic agleam reddish spots.

"You tin spot volcanic hotspots. We've been capable to show implicit the people of the superior ngo – implicit 30 orbits – however this changes and evolves," Scott Bolton, main researcher for NASA's Juno spacecraft, said successful a property lawsuit astatine the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting connected Wednesday.

NASA's Juno ngo captured an infrared presumption of Io successful July. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM)

Io is location to hundreds of volcanoes, NASA has found. Surprisingly, scientists recovered much volcanic spots successful the polar portion than successful the planet's equatorial region, Bolton said.

The abstraction probe Juno has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. After studying the state giant, Juno flew by Jupiter's satellite Ganymede successful 2021 and by Europa earlier this year.

The spacecraft is scheduled to research Io, which NASA says is the "the astir volcanic spot successful the star system," again connected December 15. It's the archetypal of 9 flybys Juno has planned implicit the adjacent twelvemonth and a half.

Scientists anticipation to stitchery much information connected the moon's volcanoes and its magnetism – which play a "tug of war" to signifier Jupiter's auroras – arsenic they alert by.

"As we ticker the volcanoes alteration and get progressive and little active, they're driving Jupiter's gigantic monster magnetosphere," Bolton said connected Wednesday.

Auroras are colorful displays of airy that are not unsocial to Earth. Jupiter has the brightest auroras successful the star system, according to NASA.

On some Earth and Jupiter, auroras hap erstwhile charged particles, specified arsenic protons oregon electrons, interact with the magnetic tract – known arsenic the magnetosphere – that surrounds a planet. Jupiter's magnetic tract is astir 20,000 times stronger than Earth's.

The information and insights Juno gleans could assistance pass aboriginal missions to survey Jupiter's moons, similar NASA's Clipper mission, which volition analyse whether Europa could enactment life.

This nonfiction was primitively published by Business Insider.

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