Juno spots changes on Io’s surface in just a two-month span
New photos taken just two months apart by Juno of a region dubbed Nusk Patera on the Jupiter moon Io showed the appearance of a distinct ring that had hardly been there before.
The pictures, taken during two recent fly-bys of the moon, are above, and show the change. From the caption:
A red ring formed around Nusku Patera in the two months between the spacecraft’s 58th flyby on Feb. 3, 2024, and its 60th on April 9, 2024. The ring obscures some nearby features like Creidne Patera. This ring, 683 miles (1,100 kilometers) wide is likely from a Pele-type plume rich in sulfur. Similar transient red rings were observed by NASA’s Galileo mission around Grian Patera and Surt and were associated with intense but short-lived thermal “outburst” eruptions.
In other words, sulfur from eruption from the central vent/caldera was flung into the sky enough that when it eventually settled back down it landed in a ring about 340 miles away from the center.
Other data from Juno, also released this week here and here, detected fresh lava flows at another volcanic region of Io dubbed, Zal Patera.