Science
Related: About this forumNASA's Juno Spacecraft Stumbled On A Glistening Lava Lake On Jupiter's Moon Io
Loki Patera is like no place on Earth.
BY
KIONA SMITH
18 HOURS AGO
NASAs Juno spacecraft recently spotted a glassy-smooth lava lake amid the volcanic hellscape of Jupiters moon Io.
When Junos orbit swooped past Io last December, its cameras captured a mirrorlike reflection from a small patch of the moons surface. The strangely shiny landmark turns out to be a lava lake, covered with a thin crust of smooth, gleaming volcanic rock. The rock was probably something like obsidian, a natural glass that forms from cooling magma here on Earth. Known as Loki Patera, the lava lake stretches 127 miles long and is dotted with rocky islands, and its edges glow with heat from the molten magma just beneath the surface.
Loki Patera isnt the first lava lake scientists have spotted on Io; previous spacecraft, including Galileo (RIP) have also sent home images of similar features, but Junos pics are the clearest and most detailed. Based on Junos data, NASA created this animation of what a flight over Loki Patera might look like.
This is an artists illustration, based on the images from Juno; Juno captured a lot of detail, but not quite this much.
On Io, lava lakes like Loki Patera probably form when the ground over a magma reservoir sinks or collapses. Earth has similar features called calderas, which form when a volcano erupts and its top collapses inward because theres less magma underneath to support it. Ios paterae (the plural of patera) are similar to calderas on Earth and Mars, but theyre also different in ways that suggest they may form a little differently. A 2001 study, which used data from Galileo, suggested that tectonic movements may pull pieces of Ios crust apart, leaving gaps that collapse and form paterae.
More:
https://www.inverse.com/science/nasas-juno-spacecraft-lava-lake-jupiters-moon-io