NASA’s Juno Peers Beneath Io’s Surface - NASA Science

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NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/USGS

This map represents data captured by the Microwave Radiometer (MWR) aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, indicating heat rising from just beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io. While infrared instruments measure the temperature of the moon’s surface, the lowest frequency microwave channels (0.6 and 1.25 gigahertz) on the MWR can penetrate between about 6 and 20 feet (2 and 6 meters) into the crust. The colors on this map illustrate a distinct temperature gradient across the moon, with the most extreme, localized heat output in red.