Juno Perijove 58, February 3, 2024 Options

[mcaplinger]

(Started a new thread to avoid cluttering up the PJ57 thread with PJ58 discussion.)

[Phil Stooke]

We just recently had a first suggestion of an impact crater in old data:

https://eos.org/articles/amateur-astronomer...le-crater-on-io


Juno would not be able to see craters like that one.

Phil

[StargazeInWonder]

"Twenty-kilometer diameter craters are made by kilometer-size impactors; such events occur on a Galilean satellite about once in a million years."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11878353/

Io's surface is "no more than a couple of mission years old."

I don't know what a fair extrapolation is for the rate of cratering for that could be seen in these images, but it seems like it would be very optimistic to hope to see one, and zero is the likeliest number. The ambiguity in appearance adds to the difficulty. (Even on Earth, the cause of origin of weathered, extant craters can be ambiguous, and we're not observing them from orbital distances!)