The Nature of the 9908A Outburst on Io

Details The Nature of the 9908A Outburst on Io The Nature of the 9908A Outburst on Io

Dec 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000dps....32.6520h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS Meeting #32, #65.20; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.1643

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Volcanic outbursts are occasionally seen on Io which more than double the in-sunlight brightness of the satellite at a wavelength of 5 μ m. One particularly well observed outburst occurred on August 2, 1999. Jupiter occultation lightcurves of the outburst combined with an accurate ephemeris for Io allows a determination of location, which appears to coincide with the dark Tawhaki caldera at (3N, 76W). Planck black-body models of the 2 to 5 μ m emission indicate temperatures in the range of 960 to 1250 K and areas in the range of 550 to 200 square km. More detailed models of the emission, which remained relatively constant over a period of several hours (when corrected for viewing angle) suggest that the activity cannot be modeled as a simple expanding lava flow. To maintain this high a temperature requires that the surface of a basalt or even a komatiite flow or lake be renewed on a time scale of much less than one hour. Observations of the activity on August 4, when it was in its waning stages, provide further constraints. The Galileo observations of the region before and after the outburst lead to further insights into the nature of these enigmatic events. Funding for this work was provided by the NASA Planetary Astronomy program.

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