Io, Still A Mystery Moon Options

[volcanopele]

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000692/

Rosaly Lopes has a new blog post on the Planetary Society blog on the mysteries still surrounding Everyone's Favorite Moon (and if it isn't your favorite moon, then may a giant, falling chunk of komatiite greet you ). She aludes to the upcoming observations by New Horizons to study surface changes and volcanic activity on Io, and to an upcoming book, on Io. The book, Io After Galileo, is currently on Amazon, but rest assured, it will be available until early 2007.

here is a link to the book's Amazon.com page:

http://www.amazon.com/Galileo-Springer-Pra...TF8&s=books

[Phil Stooke]

Right... but to be more specific, a previous calculation was that Io at best would appear only 16 pixels across. That's not much, but it will allow large features to be seen, including large eruption deposits. It is reasonable to expect that the small number of images we might expect from the closer passes by Io will let us see a few recent surface changes, such as the effects of the big eruptions just reported.

Phil

[mcaplinger]

a previous calculation was that Io at best would appear only 16 pixels across.

The Junocam images of the Moon during Earth flyby are very similar to the best approaches of Io in terms of size and resolution.

It's too early to say what the satellite encounter distances and times will look like for the real mapping orbit. By intent we don't get that close -- see http://www.trylam.com/files/AIAA_2008-7368...uno_Mission.pdf