English: This eerie view of Jupiter's moon Io in eclipse (left) was acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft while the moon was in Jupiter's shadow. Gases above the satellite's surface produced a ghostly glow that could be seen at visible wavelengths (red, green, and violet). The vivid colors, caused by collisions between Io's atmospheric gases and energetic charged particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetic field, had not previously been observed. The green and red emissions are probably produced by mechanisms similar to those in Earth's polar regions that produce the aurora, or northern and southern lights. Bright blue glows mark the sites of dense plumes of volcanic vapor, and may be places where Io is electrically connected to Jupiter.
North is to the top of the picture, and Jupiter is towards the right. The resolution is 13.5 kilometers (8 miles) per picture element. The images were taken on May 31, 1998 at a range of 1.3 million kilometers (800,000 miles) by Galileo's onboard solid state imaging camera system during the spacecraft's 15th orbit of Jupiter.
The NASA website hosts a large number of images from the
Soviet/
Russian space agency, and other non-American space agencies. These are not necessarily in the public domain.
The
SOHO (ESA & NASA) joint project implies that all materials created by its probe are copyrighted and require permission for commercial non-educational use.
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2007-05-25 20:23
Volcanopele 374×350× (88498 bytes) Adapted from NASA image release [http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01637 PIA01637] Original caption: This eerie view of Jupiter's moon Io in eclipse (left) was acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft while the moon was in Jupiter's shadow. Gases
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{{Information |Description={{en|Adapted from NASA image release [http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01637 PIA01637] Original caption: This eerie view of Jupiter's moon Io in eclipse (left) was acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft while the moo
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