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Volcanic Plume on Jupiter's Moon Io Spied by Juno Spacecraft

NASA's Juno spacecraft has captured an intriguing image of a volcanic plume straddling the line between day and night on Jupiter's notoriously eruptive moon Io.

The image is part of a larger data set gathered on the spacecraft's Dec. 21 close skim over the planet's surface, when four of Juno's cameras spent more than an hour watching the volcanic moon's pole. All told, the observations are a nice scientific bonus for the Juno team, because the spacecraft's primary job is to study Jupiter itself.

"We knew we were breaking new ground with a multispectral campaign to view Io's polar region, but no one expected we would get so lucky as to see an active volcanic plume shooting material off the moon's surface," Scott Bolton, principal investigator of the Juno mission, said in a statement released by the Southwest Research Institute, which contributed two instruments to the mission. "This is quite a New Year's present, showing us that Juno has the ability to clearly see plumes."

Previously: Jupiter's Auroras Powered by Particles from Io
NASA's Juno Mission to Jupiter Extended for 3 Years

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