The moon of Jupiter Io is covered with volcanoes, and astronomers may have spotted another – BGR

Jupiter could be the largest and most eye-catching planet in our solar system, but the planet itself is not the only thing interesting in its neighborhood. The moon of Jupiter is also a huge point of interest for scientists, and Io is one of the weirdest. Io is similar in size to the Earth's moon, but it's a much more active place. Its surface is dotted with incredibly active volcanoes, and astronomers who study Io may have spotted another.

Thanks to NASA's Juno spacecraft, scientists have seen Jupiter and its natural satellites better than ever before. The Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM for short) has set his sights on Io, he saw something new.

"The new Io hotspot that JIRAM has picked up is about 300 kilometers from the nearest landmark" Juno co-investigator Alessandro Mura, of the National Institute of Astrophysics, explains. "We do not rule out the movement or modification of a hot spot previously discovered, but it's hard to imagine that we could travel such a distance and still be considered the same." thing."

The hotspot, seen in the picture above, is not as dominant as other well-known volcanic areas of the planet, but the signal is clear enough that scientists know something is going on there. The volcanic characteristics of a world as active as Io can move and move, forming new volcanoes and cracks over time. Scientists already know at least 150 active volcanoes on its surface, but they have long suspected that there are still hundreds of potentially active volcanoes on the moon waiting to be discovered. This new hot spot can be one.

The data used for this discovery was originally collected in December 2017, but this is not the last time Juno will comment on Io. The orbiter will perform "even closer" passes to the striking alien moon in the future, so that we may be about to discover additional features of its surface.