|
|
by Jason Perry
December 28, 2000
A new eruption on Io was detected by Franck Marchis, Renée Prangé and Thierry Fusco using the ADONIS adaptive optics system on the 3.6 m telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The eruption was detected on December 16, 2000 during a monitoring program by Marchis et al. to assist with the Cassini and Galileo missions currently studying Io and other parts of the Jupiter system. The location was labeled 0012A meaning that it was the first eruption detected in December 2000. The location for the very bright eruption was found to be 130 W +/-15, 63 N +/-10, consistent with Tvashtar Catena. Tvashtar Catena had a major outburst on November 26, 2000 and was observed not only by scientists on earth but it was also observed up close by the Galileo spacecraft, flying by Io for its third time. That eruption was labeled 9911A, or the first eruption found in November 1999. The power of this eruption was found to be 115 +/- 5 GW/micron/str, similar to Loki at the peak of its eruption in November 1999.
Other volcanoes were also found to active. These eruption were not as powerful as the 0012A eruption and also represent persistently active site. They include Pele/Pillan, Volund/Zamama, Amirani/Monan, Hi'iaka/Sigurd, and Malik/Altijirra. Due to the low resolution of the ADONIS images, these eruption can not be pinned down to just one volcano.
More information and a few images can be found at their Io monitoring website at http://astron.berkeley.edu/~fmarchis/Io_OA/Run2000/ as well as here. Also read there article on AO imaging of Ionian volcanism in 1996 here.
See related Items:
News:
Articles:
Links:
