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Two New Hot Spots on Io

March 26, 1998
NASA's Galileo spacecraft obtained this image of half of Io's disk in darkness on Sept. 19, 1997.

The Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (NIMS) on Galileo obtained this image of half of Io's disk in darkness on September 19, 1997. This image, at 5 microns, shows several hot spots on Io, which are volcanic regions of enhanced thermal emission. The area shown is part of the leading hemisphere of Io.

Two new hot spots are shown and indicated in the image (New, and Shamshu). Neither of these hot spots were seen by NIMS or the Solid State Imaging Experiment, (SSI) prior to this observation, becoming only recently active. Several other previously known hot spots are labelled in the image. Galileo was at a distance of 342,000 km from Io when this observation was made.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.

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