Planetary Society logo
  • “Exploration is in our nature.” - Carl Sagan

Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Many eyes on Io

Many eyes on Io
Many eyes on Io Like most spacecraft, New Horizons has several different optical remote sensing instruments that are optimized for different types of science. Here, three of the instruments (LORRI, MVIC, and LEISA) took simultaneous views of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io. NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI

On the left, the LORRI camera captured a highly detailed, black-and-white view of the sunlit crescent, showing surface structures as well as the gigantic plume of Tvashtar erupting near the north pole.  At upper right, the MVIC near-infrared imaging spectrometer sees coloration due to compositional variations across the sunlit crescent, and also sees the incandescent glow of the throat of Tvashtar.  At lower right, the LEISA spectrometer, which sees longer infrared wavelengths than MVIC, captured the glow of Tvashtar as well as a great many more volcanic centers on Io's night side.  Further analysis of LEISA images will yield the temperatures of these volcanic centers.