A few weeks ago I wrote about my reasons for choosing an image of the volcanic plumes on Io as one of my banner images. The NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt has captured the first movie of one of these plumes. The five images that make up the movie clearly show the motion of material in the plume from the Tvashtar volcano, and the slow rotation of the satellite. I can see one other plume at the 7 o’clock position from Masubi. NASA’s site says there’s another faint plume at 10 o’clock, but I cannot see it.
Clear Skies!
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
Tvashtar in Motion
2 responses so far ↓
1 Wes // Jun 18, 2007 at 10:59 pm
These are quite spectacular images. Although you’ve already discussed it, who would have thought that this activity would be going on in those far reaches of our system?
2 Chris W // Jun 19, 2007 at 8:06 am
I know it was certainly a surprise to the folks running the Voyager probes back in 1979. Nobody expected a body as small as Io to be volcanically active, and it took some time to come up with a plausible explanation. Even more surprising was the discovery of geyser-like eruptions of nitrogen gas and dust on Neptune’s moon Triton. Still trying to get to grips with that one.
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