Hubble Space Telescope Resolves Volcanoes on Io

This picture is a composite of a black and white near infrared image of Jupiter and its satellite Io and a color image of Io at shorter wavelengths taken at almost the same time on March 5, 1994. These are the first images of a giant planet or its satellites taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (HST) since the repair mission in December 1993. Io is too small for ground-based telescopes to see the surface details. The moon’s angular diameter of one arc second is at the resolution limit of ground based telescopes. Many of these markings correspond to volcanoes that were first revealed in 1979 during the Voyager spacecraft flyby of Jupiter. Several of the volcanoes periodically are active because Io is heated by tides raised by Jupiter’s powerful gravity. The volcano Pele appears as a dark spot surrounded by an irregular orange oval in the lower part of the image. The orange material has been ejected from the volcano and spread over a huge area. Though the volcano was first discovered by Voyager, the distinctive orange color of the volcanic deposits is a new discovery in these HST images. (Voyager missed it because its cameras were not sensitive to the near-infrared wavelengths where the color is apparent). The sulfur and sulfur dioxide that probably dominate Io’s surface composition cannot produce this orange color, so the Pele volcano must be generating material with a more unusual composition, possibly rich in sodium. The Jupiter image, taken in near-infrared light, was obtained with HST’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera in wide field mode. High altitude ammonia crystal clouds are bright in this image because they reflect infrared light before it is absorbed by methane in Jupiter’s atmosphere. The most prominent feature is the Great Red Spot, which is conspicuous because of its high clouds. A cap of high-altitude haze appears at Jupiter’s south pole. The Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2 was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and managed by the Goddard Spaced Flight Center for NASA’s Office of Space Science. This image and other images and data received from the Hubble Space Telescope are posted on the World Wide Web on the Space Telescope Science Institute home page at URL http://oposite.stsc…
Addition Date:
1998-05-02
Mission:
Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
Spacecraft:
Hubble Space Telescope
Target Name:
Jupiter
Is a satellite of:
Sol (our sun)
Instrument:
Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
Product Size:
800 samples x 600 lines
Primary Data Set:
Space Telescope Science Institute
Producer ID:
STSCI-PRC94-18
facet_what:
Sun
facet_what:
Moon
facet_what:
Jupiter
facet_what:
Voyager
facet_what:
Io
facet_what:
Camera 2
facet_what:
Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
facet_what:
Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
facet_where:
Jupiter
facet_where:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
facet_when:
1979
facet_when:
December 1993
facet_when:
March 5, 1994
facet_when_year:
1979
facet_when_year:
1993
facet_when_year:
1994
Image #:
PIA01267
UID:
SPD-PHOTJ-PIA01267
orignial url:
http://photojournal…
Image ID:
119576
Resolution Size:
4
Format:
JPEG
Media Type:
Image
File Name:
PIA01267.jpg
Width:
800
Height:
600
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