Galileo Flyby Discovers Immense Lava Fountain on a Jovian Moon
FEB 01, 2000
DOI: 10.1063/1.882960
By an improbable stroke of good fortune, the north‐polar region of Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, was putting on an extraordinary volcanic display just as NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew by to take pictures on Thanksgiving Day last year. Because its proximity to Jupiter and its orbital resonance with two neighboring moons subject it to severe tidal flexing, Io turns out to be the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. (See the cover of this issue.)
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© 2000 American Institute of Physics
