See the new image of Jupiter’s volcanic moon from Earth

The Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham, Arizona has obtained the highest resolution image ever of the Earth of Io, the most volcanic world in the solar system.

About the same diameter as Earth’s moons, the innermost of Jupiter’s four giant moons are covered in volcanoes, some that shoot plumes of sulfur hundreds of miles into space.

It’s been photographed by spacecraft — notably NASA’s Juno in recent months — but this is the best image ever using an Earth-based instrument.

Heat of Friction

Io is volcanic due to the gravitational pull of Jupiter and three of its other largest moons—Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—which causes the moon to be pulled in different directions during its orbit. The rise of frictional heat in its interior causes continuous and widespread volcanic activity. Scientists think there is a magma ocean beneath its rocky surface.

Io, which orbits Jupiter every 42 hours, was photographed by the only binocular telescope of its kind. Equipped with two 27-foot mirrors mounted side-by-side, ir was able to detect small features up to 50 miles away, a spatial resolution that had until now only been achieved by spacecraft orbiting the giant planet.

Throwing lava

Published this week on Geophysical Research LettersThe images captured three of Io’s most prominent features—Pele (below and to the right of the moon’s center), the white ring around Pillan Patera (to the right of Pele), and Io’s largest volcano, Loki Patera (left).

The image is so detailed that researchers were able to spot a change in Io’s surface where Pillan Patera is spewing lava around Pele. “We interpret the changes as dark lava deposits and white sulfur dioxide deposits from an eruption at Pillan Patera, which partially overlie the red sulphur-rich plume deposit of Pele,” said Ashley Davies, co-author of the paper and a principal scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Such events have been impossible to imagine from Earth before. The discovery is SHARK-VIS, a new high-contrast optical imaging instrument equipped with the telescope, which already has a state-of-the-art adaptive optics system to compensate for blurring caused by turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere.

In October last year, during the planet’s 55th close flyby, Juno passed 7,270 miles (11,700 kilometers) from Io, making it the closest flyby since NASA’s Galileo probe imaged the volcanic moon in October 2001.

During its next close pass in December, it came just 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the moon’s surface. In April of this year it took more images (above) from 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) above Io’s surface.

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