Io During the Juno Epoch: St. Louis Astronomical Society July Meeting
Io is one of the large satellites of Jupiter. A little larger than Earth’s Moon, it is intensely volcanic as a result of extreme tidal heating. Typically, a half-dozen or more volcanoes are erupting every day on Io. NASA’s Juno spacecraft, in polar orbit around Jupiter since 2016, has provided unprecedented views of Io’s poles, allowing a full, global accounting of Io’s extraordinary volcanoes for the first time. Dr. Davies will talk about the latest observations of Io by Juno and the James Webb Space Telescope, and what these data have revealed about Io’s volcanoes and interior.
Dr. Ashley Gerard Davies is a Principal Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, which he joined in 1994. He specializes in the remote sensing and modelling of volcanic activity. He was a member of the Galileo spacecraft’s Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer team and is a Co-Investigator on MISE, the imaging spectrometer on the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is scheduled to be launched in October 2024.
The event, cosponsored by NASA's Missouri Space Grant Consortium, is open to the public free of charge. The St. Louis Astronomical Society is an organization for individuals interested in astronomy and telescopes. For more information about Astronomical Society events, please visit www.slasonline.org.
Free parking will be available.