Juno Detects Volcanic Eruption on Jupiter’s Moon Io

Jupiter has several moons, one of which is ‘Io’. Known as the fourth largest moon of Jupiter, Io has been found to have the most active volcano in the solar system. Not only that, but NASA scientists have said that the volcano has started erupting after a recent powerful explosion.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has detected a volcanic eruption on Jupiter’s moon Io. Scientists have analyzed the data from the spacecraft and estimated that the volcanic eruption generated about 80 trillion watts of heat in the surrounding area. This is six times the combined power output of all the world’s power plants.

   

According to NASA, a new volcano has been discovered by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument on the Juno spacecraft. The volcanic eruption site is about 15,000 square kilometers in size. And therefore it is considered to be the largest volcanic structure on the moon Io.

Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the Juno mission and a space physicist at the Southwest Research Institute, said that the intensity of this volcanic event was unexpected. Data from Juno’s latest orbit indicate that this is the most powerful volcano in our solar system.

Juno has taken several images of the eruption on the moon Io. In the image, a large part of the moon Io is seen in darkness. It is believed that the eruption covered a large part of the moon in darkness because it was covered with lava. This new discovery will help to learn more about the volcanic activity outside the Earth.