Two plumes of gas emitted from as many volcanic vents, high mountain peaks that cast well-defined shadows and lava lakes that even seem to host islands: this is what the new very high resolution images taken by NASA's Juno probe during its two close encounters show with the most volcanically active celestial body in the Solar System, Jupiter's moon Io.
The flybys carried out in recent weeks by Juno are the closest in the last twenty years, NASA notes.
The first flyby took place last December 30, when the probe arrived within 1,500 kilometers of Io's surface, while the second flyby took place last week over the southern hemisphere.
Precisely on this occasion, on February 3, Juno imaged the two volcanic plumes from a distance of 3,800 kilometers.
The on-board JunoCam instrument "returned spectacular high-resolution images and raw data is now available to process, improve and investigate", continues NASA, which launches an appeal to all enthusiasts to download the raw images available online to examine and process them thus helping the mission's scientific team.
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