Jupiter’s moon Io, photographed by Voyager 2, 10 July 1979.
The end of this blog’s Io-thon follows on from yesterday’s post. The photos used in this gif were taken with longer exposures than yesterday’s, so there is a better contrast between Io and the background. Two volcanic eruptions are clearly visible in the top-left: I think that they are from Amirani and Maui. There’s also an eruption on the right-hand side, but as its only lit by reflected light from Jupiter, it requires a lot of brightening to see (NASA’s photojournal shows it here).
You can also see a volcano in the south, tall enough to stay in sunlight even as the surrounding areas fall into darkness.
Yesterday I mentioned the bright spot glinting near the equator. I asked Jason Perry (who used to write an Io blog) about it on Twitter and he said that it “looks like specular reflection off of glassy, cooled lava near Hi’iaka Patera.” So there you go.
![thefrogman:
[video] [h/t: cineraria]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/a1fb3ee30fecec8b3f67a91184c3fd1c/tumblr_mmc1zoFyfj1qbyxr0o1_400.gif)
