We Might Have Massively Underestimated Io’s Thermal Output

One of the M-band images of Io's lava lakes, taken by Juno. Credit - NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM/MSSS

Io is a world of extremes. It is by far the most volcanically active world in our solar system. Being continually squeezed in the never-ending tug-of-war between Jupiter and its larger satellites will do that to a moon. As a result, Io has over 400 “paterae” – volcanic depressions that spew lava up onto its surface. And, according to a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv and utilizing data from Juno’s Jupiter InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) tool, we have been massively underestimating the power output of those paterae for decades.

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