Volcano on Io

March 2, 2007 9:21 AM

Space volcano. The New Horizons space probe, en route to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, captures an amazing image of the Tvashtar volcano on Jupiter's moon Io.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot (9 comments total)

Crap. All those moons are ours except Europa, so we've got a pretty big mess to clean up.

Seriously, very cool image.
posted by gurple at 9:25 AM on March 2, 2007

Off topic, but related -- check out these new images of Saturn from the Cassini mission. This life-like movie sequence captures Saturn's rings during a ringplane crossing -- which Cassini makes twice per orbit -- from the spacecraft’s point of view.
posted by ericb at 9:31 AM on March 2, 2007

Cool picture. But, even though Tvashtar is named after a Hindu god, it sounds to me like a made-up name from a bad sf novel. Although in that case it would be something like T'Vashtar.
posted by brundlefly at 9:45 AM on March 2, 2007

That is just completely swell. Thanks!
posted by hal9k at 9:50 AM on March 2, 2007

When are we going to get some hi-def imax footage of some of this stuff?
posted by empath at 9:58 AM on March 2, 2007

That's no volcano. It's a nuclear weapon going off.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 10:45 AM on March 2, 2007

Oooooo
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 10:46 AM on March 2, 2007

yes.
posted by MvE at 11:01 AM on March 2, 2007

does the bahgavad gita say anything about the likelihood of being reincarnated as a space probe? because that's looking like a pretty sweet option for one of my future lives.
posted by the painkiller at 11:10 AM on March 2, 2007