Ridge Catches Sunset, Lava Spreads in Io Views from Galileo

In one newly released image of Jupiter’s moon Io from NASA’s Galileo
spacecraft, a mountain ridge named Mongibello, three-fourths as tall
as Mount Everest, gleams from the rays of an otherworldly sunset.

Other Io pictures that researchers are presenting at a scientific
meeting show colorful volcanic deposits covering the ground and a
recent lava flow. Galileo captured the images during flybys of Io in
the past three years. The images and captions about them are available
online from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalogue/PIA03886,
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalogue/PIA03885,
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalogue/PIA03884,
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalogue/PIA03887 and
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalogue/PIA03888,

and from the University of Arizona’s Planetary Image Research
Laboratory, Tucson, at

http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/missions/Galileo/releases/ .

Scientists are studying Galileo data for a better understanding of
Io’s mountains and volcanoes. They are presenting the images in San
Francisco during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union
through Dec. 10.

Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter since December 1995. More
information about the mission is available at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo . JPL, a division of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages Galileo for NASA’s Office
of Space Science, Washington, D.C.