Io erupts, in color

Filed under pretty pictures, global views, amateur image processing, Jupiter's moons, Io, New Horizons

Go Back

Only after New Horizons flew by Jupiter could its sensitive MVIC imaging spectrometer be used to take pictures of targets in the brightly lit Jupiter system. This view of Io was taken at 00:25 UT on March 1, 2007. The throat of the volcano Tvashtar glows red on Io's nightside, and its umbrella-shaped plume is lit faintly blue by the Sun.

NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Emily Lakdawalla

Although MVIC can produce images in approximate true color through red, green, and blue filters, the lighting was too bright for the red and green filters, whose images were overexposed. Consequently this view is composed of blue and methane-filter (890-nanometer) images and only approximates what the human eye would see.