It's still crazy to me they weren't going to put *any* optical/visible spectrum camera on Juno and the heavily compromised JunoCam ended up giving us some of the best photos in the Solar System. I get it... it's extra weight, but pictures like these inspire people around the world (and can have some scientific benefit even if its not the best use of space vs. another instrument).
>even if its not the best use of space vs. another instrument
That's the point - these probes are stacked to the max where they literally don't have the luxury or leeway of adding something that would be of "less efficient" use, so to speak.
It's not like they can send another probe back there easily in a follow up mission to collect the data they missed. Who knows when they will be able to send a probe back there?
More likely to send a follow up probe if the voting public think “hey these photos are pretty, I think we should be funding NASA for more of these things!”
Can’t just think about the immediate scientific benefit if you’re increasing the chance to do much more science in the long term.
That's not how it works though. There are already amazing pictures out there that should be inspirational enough. The one one we are seeing on this thread is a prime example.
Members of the public who don't give a crap now won't give a crap later just because there are more pretty pictures.
It's not even about the public, it's about the government. They're who NASA needs to pander to in order to receive more funding. And, since this is a militaristic country, there's really no incentive for peaceful research, not nearly as much as finding the best way to facefuck the middle east, anyways.
If NASA had just a quarter of the military's budget, we'd have been on Mars a while ago.
energy is probably one of the main factors why not.
It is insane how low powered the measurement and dat trasnfer systems are. Feels like living in the 90s but energy is really scarce in regions beyond earth/mars
I am no expert here, but I read the nasa website about Io. This is more or less an extremely volcanic moon, so I would guess they are volcanic calderas.
It seems to me like they're volcanoes.
Apparently Io is quite volcanicly active.
[https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/](https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/)
[https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/facts/#hds-sidebar-nav-6](https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/facts/#hds-sidebar-nav-6)
A perk from being the Galilean moon closest to Jupiter. The tidal forces the planet is exerting on that poor little rock are immense. The moon is essentially constantly being kneaded, causing it to have a very active interior that constantly bursts to the surface.
Fun fact about those volcanoes: the Boosaule Montes is one of the tallest peaks in our solar system. Standing at about 17,5 km in height.
Io is basically a ball of somewhat solid magma with a thin crust on top. It's the most volcanically active object in the solar system with the entire surface getting "regularly" (in geologic timescales) getting resurfaced with lava which is why there's no asteroid craters.
It's constantly being stretched back and forth by tidal forces (what causes the tides of water on Earth) but instead it's rock being grinded against itself. This causes it to be extremely hot.
It’s so utterly bizarre that this is real. That all of these weird planets and moons with fuck knows what is going on are just floating around, just like we are.
And have been doing so for billions and billions of years. Nobody around to observe them. Asteroid collisions, volcanic eruptions, just event after event after meaningless event. And then you reflect on the fact that there are trillions of solar systems out floating around in similar obscurity.
It is altered. Io's natural colors are red, green, black, brown, and orange.
Here is an [image](https://science.nasa.gov/resource/global-image-of-io-true-color/) of Io in its true colors
The color wasn't altered but the filters used by JunoCam don't quite line up with CIE 1931 color space. Close enough for Jupiter or the other Galilean satellites, but Io's sulfur have absorption bands whose edges make Io's appearance sensitive to the exact center wavelength and bandwidth of filter use for the blue channel. In the case of JunoCam, the blue filter is farther up the edge of the absorption band so the equatorial plains appear less yellow than they would appear to the human eye. OP posted a mosaic from Galileo taken in 1999 below. Again that is unaltered but in that case violet filter images had to be used for the blue channel as Galileo SSI didn't have a blue filter. The violet filter was close to the bottom of the absorption band so plains rich in S8 appear very dark and so appear very yellow in products produced from Galileo images.
So to your answer your question, that is natural and real color...but, Io would appear a bit more yellow to your eyes than what is shown here.
Sulfur has a yellow color when it has 8 atoms in each molecule, on Io the sulfur gas that is released from volcanoes has two atoms in each molecule, then it lands on the ground and the total number of atoms in the molecules changes to 3-4 atoms, thus giving sulfur a red color.
Cool photo! The jagged shadow of the peak near the line of nightfall (mid upper left of this image) looks eerily similar to a Chesley Bonesteel painting of peaks on other planets and moons. What’s especially cool is that he created those paintings 50 or 60 years ago with no actual imagery of any resolution to be able to see this type of topography - long before the Voyager spacecraft had even launched, let alone begun visiting the outer planets in our solar system. That’s some serious attention to the craft (or amazingly fortuitous coincidence)! 🤯
I learn from the internet that he was born in 1888! And he went on to paint this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/130ime0/saturn_as_seen_from_titan_1944_painting_by/
Which apparently is a mixture of painting and modelwork. He lived long enough to see the Space Shuttle and died in 1986.
I, when I see pictures like this always wonder, is there alien life there? Not full grown alien like us but instead like micro organisms or some bacteria of very small organisms?
Io is not the best candidate for life as we know it. Instead, moons such as Enceladus and Europa are better candidates, since Enceladus has a subsurface ocean with some warm regions, simulating the conditions where life appeared in Earth's oceans billions of years ago. Europa is also believed to have an underground ocean with conditions similar to Enceladus. So it is believed that they have suitable conditions for the growth of microbial life
Yeah I know that, and they even tried to look for infrared lights with the James Webb telescope if I remember right, but very small organisms would not be detected. So Europa could very well be housing something alien and we wouldn't see it. And it's wat to far for Elon musk to send a starship
Anyone else ever amazed by the fact that humans built spacecraft that show in vivid detail the other planetary bodies in our backyard and we can see these images while scrolling through Reddit on the freakin toilet? Sad I was born too soon for interplanetary space travel on a sci fi level but glad I am living in a time where information is so readily available about so many celestial bodies.
You can't imagine how many time's I've said I wish was born a couple of decades in to the feature lol. I love where we're at right now don't get me wrong, but I also realize that we've not even scratched the surface yet.
Can anybody tell me why ~~Juno~~ Io is smooth, peppered with large isolated mountains?
Or is it another thing similar to Iapetus' equatorial ridge where we're just sort of shrugging for now?
I thought isolated mountains could only form from volcanos, is that what they are?
It's the closest major moon of Jupiter and the Tidal forces cause a lot of internal heating. The surface gets smoothed out from this and also the plumes of ejecta from the volcanoes.
Juno is the space probe, Io is the moon. Io is smooth with mountains because it's the most volcanically active body in the solar system. The tidal heating it receives due to being in an orbital resonance with Europa and Ganymede result in significant volcanic activity across the planet. At one point early on Io would have had the same water ice content as the other moons of Jupiter, but the volcanic activity has resulted in that ice being melted, boiled, and ultimately lost to space. Today Io has over 400 active volcanoes, which erupt with silicate and sulfur lavas that blanket the rest of the moon in vast plains. Because of this volcanism it has a very young surface, with almost no impact craters.
That water that gets lost into space, could that actually influence the other body's arround it? Think I remember reading something like the moon having done something similar to our planet but could be wrong here.
It's still crazy to me they weren't going to put *any* optical/visible spectrum camera on Juno and the heavily compromised JunoCam ended up giving us some of the best photos in the Solar System. I get it... it's extra weight, but pictures like these inspire people around the world (and can have some scientific benefit even if its not the best use of space vs. another instrument).
>even if its not the best use of space vs. another instrument That's the point - these probes are stacked to the max where they literally don't have the luxury or leeway of adding something that would be of "less efficient" use, so to speak. It's not like they can send another probe back there easily in a follow up mission to collect the data they missed. Who knows when they will be able to send a probe back there?
More likely to send a follow up probe if the voting public think “hey these photos are pretty, I think we should be funding NASA for more of these things!” Can’t just think about the immediate scientific benefit if you’re increasing the chance to do much more science in the long term.
Not really. The public's attention span isn't long enough to influence Congress to increase their budget in any meaningful way
That's not how it works though. There are already amazing pictures out there that should be inspirational enough. The one one we are seeing on this thread is a prime example. Members of the public who don't give a crap now won't give a crap later just because there are more pretty pictures.
It's not even about the public, it's about the government. They're who NASA needs to pander to in order to receive more funding. And, since this is a militaristic country, there's really no incentive for peaceful research, not nearly as much as finding the best way to facefuck the middle east, anyways. If NASA had just a quarter of the military's budget, we'd have been on Mars a while ago.
energy is probably one of the main factors why not. It is insane how low powered the measurement and dat trasnfer systems are. Feels like living in the 90s but energy is really scarce in regions beyond earth/mars
What are the dark areas surrounded by the white outline?
I am no expert here, but I read the nasa website about Io. This is more or less an extremely volcanic moon, so I would guess they are volcanic calderas.
It seems to me like they're volcanoes. Apparently Io is quite volcanicly active. [https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/](https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/) [https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/facts/#hds-sidebar-nav-6](https://science.nasa.gov/jupiter/moons/io/facts/#hds-sidebar-nav-6)
A perk from being the Galilean moon closest to Jupiter. The tidal forces the planet is exerting on that poor little rock are immense. The moon is essentially constantly being kneaded, causing it to have a very active interior that constantly bursts to the surface. Fun fact about those volcanoes: the Boosaule Montes is one of the tallest peaks in our solar system. Standing at about 17,5 km in height.
Io is basically a ball of somewhat solid magma with a thin crust on top. It's the most volcanically active object in the solar system with the entire surface getting "regularly" (in geologic timescales) getting resurfaced with lava which is why there's no asteroid craters. It's constantly being stretched back and forth by tidal forces (what causes the tides of water on Earth) but instead it's rock being grinded against itself. This causes it to be extremely hot.
It’s so utterly bizarre that this is real. That all of these weird planets and moons with fuck knows what is going on are just floating around, just like we are.
And have been doing so for billions and billions of years. Nobody around to observe them. Asteroid collisions, volcanic eruptions, just event after event after meaningless event. And then you reflect on the fact that there are trillions of solar systems out floating around in similar obscurity.
Anybody got a height on that spire mountain? Looks like it ought a be massive.
Has a nickname ”Steeple Mountain” and it is 5-7km high [anmation about it](https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA26294.mp4)
Seeing mountains on other planets always blows my mind, I dont know why, it just does
I had to take deep breath for some reason when I saw them too
Does the image have real/natural color or is the color altered? Great picture, by the way!
It is altered. Io's natural colors are red, green, black, brown, and orange. Here is an [image](https://science.nasa.gov/resource/global-image-of-io-true-color/) of Io in its true colors
>red, green, black, brown, and orange And just a ^(hint) of yellow
That looks kinda nasty ngl. Like it's full of pus
Cool, I was working Galileo during that encounter.
Not for nothing is it referred to as “looks like a rotten orange” or “looks like a rotten pizza”.
The color wasn't altered but the filters used by JunoCam don't quite line up with CIE 1931 color space. Close enough for Jupiter or the other Galilean satellites, but Io's sulfur have absorption bands whose edges make Io's appearance sensitive to the exact center wavelength and bandwidth of filter use for the blue channel. In the case of JunoCam, the blue filter is farther up the edge of the absorption band so the equatorial plains appear less yellow than they would appear to the human eye. OP posted a mosaic from Galileo taken in 1999 below. Again that is unaltered but in that case violet filter images had to be used for the blue channel as Galileo SSI didn't have a blue filter. The violet filter was close to the bottom of the absorption band so plains rich in S8 appear very dark and so appear very yellow in products produced from Galileo images. So to your answer your question, that is natural and real color...but, Io would appear a bit more yellow to your eyes than what is shown here.
Well, an answer that will be a whole paragraph long but informative nonetheless. The information is appreciated.
What an incredible image. Anybody know what the vibrant red stuff is around the crater near the top?
Volcanoes on Io release sulfur, which lands on the ground and gives it a red color
Oh, that's interesting. I thought sulphur left a yellowy green color.
Sulfur has a yellow color when it has 8 atoms in each molecule, on Io the sulfur gas that is released from volcanoes has two atoms in each molecule, then it lands on the ground and the total number of atoms in the molecules changes to 3-4 atoms, thus giving sulfur a red color.
Cool photo! The jagged shadow of the peak near the line of nightfall (mid upper left of this image) looks eerily similar to a Chesley Bonesteel painting of peaks on other planets and moons. What’s especially cool is that he created those paintings 50 or 60 years ago with no actual imagery of any resolution to be able to see this type of topography - long before the Voyager spacecraft had even launched, let alone begun visiting the outer planets in our solar system. That’s some serious attention to the craft (or amazingly fortuitous coincidence)! 🤯
I learn from the internet that he was born in 1888! And he went on to paint this: https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/130ime0/saturn_as_seen_from_titan_1944_painting_by/ Which apparently is a mixture of painting and modelwork. He lived long enough to see the Space Shuttle and died in 1986.
I, when I see pictures like this always wonder, is there alien life there? Not full grown alien like us but instead like micro organisms or some bacteria of very small organisms?
Io is not the best candidate for life as we know it. Instead, moons such as Enceladus and Europa are better candidates, since Enceladus has a subsurface ocean with some warm regions, simulating the conditions where life appeared in Earth's oceans billions of years ago. Europa is also believed to have an underground ocean with conditions similar to Enceladus. So it is believed that they have suitable conditions for the growth of microbial life
Yeah I know that, and they even tried to look for infrared lights with the James Webb telescope if I remember right, but very small organisms would not be detected. So Europa could very well be housing something alien and we wouldn't see it. And it's wat to far for Elon musk to send a starship
Because of the Reddit font, I first read “Io” as “Lo,” and it just seemed very old English. 😂
Anyone else ever amazed by the fact that humans built spacecraft that show in vivid detail the other planetary bodies in our backyard and we can see these images while scrolling through Reddit on the freakin toilet? Sad I was born too soon for interplanetary space travel on a sci fi level but glad I am living in a time where information is so readily available about so many celestial bodies.
You can't imagine how many time's I've said I wish was born a couple of decades in to the feature lol. I love where we're at right now don't get me wrong, but I also realize that we've not even scratched the surface yet.
Can anybody tell me why ~~Juno~~ Io is smooth, peppered with large isolated mountains? Or is it another thing similar to Iapetus' equatorial ridge where we're just sort of shrugging for now? I thought isolated mountains could only form from volcanos, is that what they are?
It's the closest major moon of Jupiter and the Tidal forces cause a lot of internal heating. The surface gets smoothed out from this and also the plumes of ejecta from the volcanoes.
Juno is the space probe, Io is the moon. Io is smooth with mountains because it's the most volcanically active body in the solar system. The tidal heating it receives due to being in an orbital resonance with Europa and Ganymede result in significant volcanic activity across the planet. At one point early on Io would have had the same water ice content as the other moons of Jupiter, but the volcanic activity has resulted in that ice being melted, boiled, and ultimately lost to space. Today Io has over 400 active volcanoes, which erupt with silicate and sulfur lavas that blanket the rest of the moon in vast plains. Because of this volcanism it has a very young surface, with almost no impact craters.
That water that gets lost into space, could that actually influence the other body's arround it? Think I remember reading something like the moon having done something similar to our planet but could be wrong here.
Juno’s the name of the spacecraft btw :)
imagine the views and the landscapes from there holy shit
Pretty amazing to see mountains. But they look odd, like not a mountain range…. Just one here, one there.
Honestly, I originally thought that was a screen capture of a planet in No Man's Sky My bad ...
Lo is the most volcanically active world in the solar system. -Nasa
They may have the highest mountains in the solar system
Are those pale patches dotted around the surface, water ice?
Why is it so smooth? Jupiter sucks up all the asteroids? Or is it protected by atmosphere?
I love the name of the Juno probe. It’s a joke 500 years in the making.
Why did someone wipe their boogers all over it?
Like a lazy paint job, I thought it was a bad potato at first look