Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0Įxcept where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. (2018), The oxygen neutral cloud surrounding Jupiter’s volcanic moon, Eos, 99. ( Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics,, 2018) Ultimately, the authors note, a better understanding of the neutral cloud will provide important insights into the gas giant’s magnetosphere. Neutral particles from Io’s atmosphere are one of the primary sources for charged particles in Jupiter’s massive magnetosphere. The brightest feature on Io is suspected to be a penetrating radiation signature from an erupting volcano, and. This study provides the first good look at Io’s neutral cloud, which has historically been too dim to measure. Io is softly illuminated by moonlight from another of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. The team also calculated a source rate of 410 kilograms per second, which is consistent with previous estimates. They found more oxygen inside Io’s orbit than previously thought, with a peak density of 80 atoms per cubic centimeter at a distance of 5.7 R J. The team plugged the satellite observations into an emissions model to estimate the atomic oxygen number density. Now a new mission, Io Volcano Observer (IVO), is being proposed to NASA. The authors found that Io’s oxygen cloud has two distinct regions: a dense area that spreads inside Io’s orbit, called the “banana cloud,” and a more diffuse region, which spreads all the way out to 7.6 Jovian radii ( R J). The innermost Galilean moon of Jupiter, Io is thought to be home to an underground ocean of magma. The measurements were collected over 35 days between November and December 2014, a relatively calm volcanic period for the moon. The researchers used spectrographic data from the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectroscope for Exospheric Dynamic ( EXCEED) instrument aboard the satellite to measure atomic emissions at 130.4 nanometers around Io’s orbit. ![]() The team took advantage of data collected by Japan’s Hisaki satellite, which launched in 2013 and became the first space telescope to observe planets like Mars and Jupiter from Earth’s orbit. provide new insights into the role of the neutral cloud in the Io plasma torus. It hosts more than 400 active volcanoes, spewing out sulfur gases that give Io its yellow-white-orange-red colors when they freeze out. Some of the particles escape from Io’s gravity and form clouds of neutral sulfur and oxygen. Io is the most volcanically active moon in our solar system. Previous studies have shown that most atomic oxygen and sulfur escape Io’s atmosphere by colliding with energetic particles, such as torus ions, which bump the particles out of the atmosphere in a process known as atomic sputtering. Exactly how those neutral gases escape Io’s atmosphere is not well understood, however.
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