Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agufm.p72b0499s&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #P72B-0499
Other
5418 Heat Flow, 5430 Interiors (8147), 5480 Volcanism (8450), 6218 Jovian Satellites
Scientific paper
The magnitude of Io's heat flow is of great importance for constraining tidal heating mechanisms and for understanding its interior structure. Most previous estimates of the heat flow have concentrated on the emission from the discrete hot spots and have thus been lower limits, as they did not account for low-temperature emission from the regions between the hot spots, due either to very old cooling lava flows or conduction through the crust. Improved heat flow estimates, considering emission from the entire surface, can be obtained by comparing Io's total thermal radiation, in all directions and at all wavelengths, with the total amount of sunlight that it absorbs. Io's thermal radiation as a function of solar phase angle can be constrained by ground-based observations and by Voyager and Galileo spacecraft data, while new Galileo bolometric albedo maps provide new estimates of absorbed sunlight. Combining these data sets we determine a heat flow estimate of 2.4 +/- 0.7 W m-2, in agreement with, but better constrained than, several other recent estimates. A remaining mystery is the remarkably uniform distribution of thermal emission with latitude in Galileo maps of Io's nighttime temperatures, despite the greater insolation at the equator. This may indicate excess endogenic emission from the poles, with implications for interior structure.
McEwen Alfred S.
Pearl John C.
Rathbun Julie A.
Spencer John Robert
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