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PIA02546: Sulfur Gas in Pele's Plume
 Target Name:  Io
 Is a satellite of:  Jupiter
 Mission:  Galileo
 Spacecraft:  Galileo Orbiter
 Instrument:  Photopolarimeter-Radiometer 
 Product Size:  710 x 746 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Lowell Observatory
 Producer ID:  MRPS96240
 Addition Date:  2000-05-18
 Primary Data Set:  Galileo EDRs
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA02546.tif (544.7 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA02546.jpg (42.15 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This image depicts the discovery of sulfur gas in the plume of the Pele volcano on Jupiter's moon Io, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in October 1999, during a flyby of Io by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The main image shows Io passing in front of Jupiter as seen by Hubble's Wide-Field Planetary Camera (WFPC2) in near-ultraviolet light. The small inset shows that when a WFPC2 image at shorter ultraviolet wavelengths is included in a color composite with the near-ultraviolet image, Io's Pele plume appears as a dark smudge off the edge of Io's disk, silhouetted against Jupiter. The larger inset shows data from Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which mapped the composition of Pele's plume by analyzing the ultraviolet light from Jupiter which had passed through the plume. The regions shown in yellow were rich in sulfur gas, which was precisely centered over the Pele volcano, whose position is shown along with the edge of Io's disk.

Additional information about the Hubble Space Telescope is available at http://www.stsci.edu/. Additional information about the Galileo mission is available at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Lowell Observatory

Image Addition Date:
2000-05-18