Loki Patera may sound just like the title of a Norse god’s heavy steel band, however it’s truly a lake product of lava positioned on one in every of Jupiter’s moons, Io. On Sunday NASA scientists launched a brand new animation of Loki Patera’s actions, revealing that the 127-mile-long (200 kilometers) pure characteristic appears to have a shimmering, reflective floor. In different phrases, the lava lake has cooled a lot that it seems to be as easy as glass.
The scientists ascertained this from knowledge compiled by the Juno spacecraft, which made extraordinarily shut flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024. By approaching 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) the Jovian moon’s floor, the researchers obtained close-up pictures of the celestial physique’s northern latitudes.
“Io is solely affected by volcanoes, and we caught a number of of them in motion,” Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton stated throughout a information convention on the European Geophysical Union Common Meeting in Vienna. “We additionally acquired some nice close-ups and different knowledge on a 200-kilometer-long (127-mile-long) lava lake known as Loki Patera. There’s superb element displaying these loopy islands embedded in the course of a doubtlessly magma lake rimmed with sizzling lava. The specular reflection our devices recorded of the lake suggests elements of Io’s floor are as easy as glass, paying homage to volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”
Whereas illustrating Loki Patera was actually vital work, it isn’t the first mission of the Juno spacecraft. One in every of its chief goals is to find out whether or not Io comprises sufficient water to help extraterrestrial life, which the researchers are doing by measuring for hydrogen and oxygen atoms (which comprise water) throughout its shut encounters with Io’s environment.
