This JunoCam picture of Loki Patera (proper of centre) was captured in February 2024 throughout Juno’s 58th flyby of Jupiter. The brightness of the function is attributable to daylight reflecting off the strong lava floor, in the identical method that mild is mirrored by a mirror, aka specular reflection. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Thomas Thomopoulos)
The closest photographs but of Jupiter’s volcanic moon have revealed one of many main floor options is sort of as easy as a sheet of glass!
In December 2023 and February 2024, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made shut passes by Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s 4 giant Galilean moons. Throughout these flybys, Juno got here inside 1,500 km of Io and used the JunoCam instrument to snap the closest views but of this distinctive moon’s floor.
“Io is just suffering from volcanoes, and we caught just a few of them in motion,” Scott Bolton, the precept investigator for the Juno mission, stated in a information convention on the 2024 European Geophysical Union Common Meeting on April 16.
A picture of Jupiter’s moon Io, captured through the Juno spacecraft’s 57th flyby of Jupiter, in December 2023, captured an incredible have a look at Loki Patera, an immense volcanic lake within the moon’s northern hemisphere. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill)
“We additionally obtained some nice close-ups and different information on a 200-kilometre-long lava lake known as Loki Patera. There may be wonderful element exhibiting these loopy islands embedded in the course of a probably magma lake rimmed with scorching lava,” Bolton defined.
A few of the views captured throughout Juno’s flyby gave the mission staff a particular deal with. They have been capable of see mild reflecting off Loki Patera’s strong crust, revealing its remarkably easy floor.
“The specular reflection our devices recorded of the lake suggests components of Io’s floor are as easy as glass, harking back to volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth,” Bolton added.
