Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p43a1388k&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P43A-1388
Other
5480 Volcanism (6063, 8148, 8450), 6219 Io, 6297 Instruments And Techniques, 8450 Planetary Volcanism (5480, 6063, 8148), 8485 Remote Sensing Of Volcanoes
Scientific paper
Lava fountains provide some of the most spectacular volcanic activity on Io, the innermost large moon of Jupiter. However, properly interpreting observations of this style of eruption is challenging. In the past, infrared emissions from fountains were interpreted using models derived for lava flows. Such modeling has been highly successful for lava lakes and lava flows. However, these models are appropriate for infinite half- spaces of hot lava, not the small droplets that are expected. A simple fountain model, derived from the cooling of small spheres, shows that the earlier temperature estimates were probably >200 °C too high. The 1997 eruption at Pillan Patera was carefully re-examined, since this is the only observation that appeared to require ultramafic eruption temperatures. The new estimates of observational uncertainties, coupled with the new thermal model, allow lava temperatures consistent with basalts or basaltic komatiites. These eruption temperatures suggest that the upper mantle source region is at ~1300 °C. This in turn implies that a small part of the uppermost mantle reaches ~25% partial melting, and interconnected melt extends down to ~600 km depth. The lava droplet model also places difficult constraints on obtaining useful color temperatures from future high-resolution imaging of Ionian lava fountains. A critical goal of such observations would be to detect the highest possible temperatures near the vent to provide better constraints on lava composition. However, if the droplets are similar in size to lunar pyroclastics (i.e., ~100 microns), then the color temperature would drop 100 °C in less than 0.1 seconds. This means that color temperatures should ideally be derived from images acquired simultaneously through different filters. If not simultaneous, the separate colors should be acquired much less than 0.1 s apart. Another procedure that can assist is to obtain images that rapidly alternate between the different colors. These constraints need to be considered by future imaging systems sent to the Jovian system. Eruption temperatures remain the best hope for estimating lava composition since the lava surface is expected to be highly glassy, lacking distinct spectral features.
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