Title of programme: Monitoring active regions on the Io Galilean moon
Abstract: Jupiter’s closest moon Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System. As such, it provides a window to better understand processes involving tidal heating and planetary magnetospheres that are both highly-r^ant in exoplanet sciences but also for other bodies in the Solar System. The Galileo mission and contemporaneous ground-based monitoring in the infra-red showed that there are delineated active regions at the surface of Io in the form of volcanic hotspots (e.g. de Kleer et al. 2017). Volcanic outgassing on Io produces SO2, which condenses and forms frost at the surface. Furthermore, during eclipses by Jupiter, the drop in temperature leads to a sharp atmospheric collapse suggesting that the atmosphere is mostly driven by SO2 sublimation (e.g. Tsang et al. 2016). A side effect is a possible variation in the SO2 frost coverage at the surface, which the proposed observations are attempting to detect and correlate with archival IR monitoring. Repeated, high-spatial resolution observations of the Io surface in the visible has never been achieved (apart from in-situ missions). Such observations could further provide information on the relative brightness of the different regions and determine their variability timescales. Another objective is to compare our CHEOPS reconstructed maps with the archival imagery from the Galileo instruments to investigate longer-term changes in surface reflective properties.
Temporal Coverage
2022-09-01T21:28:00Z / 2022-09-02T08:24:00Z
Version
3.0
Mission Description
CHEOPS (Benz et al., https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-020-09679-4) is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission in partnership with Switzerland with important contributions to the payload and the ground segment from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The satellite has a single payload comprising an ultra-high precision photometer covering the 330 - 1100 nm wavelength range in a single photometric band. Observations are made as part of the Guaranteed Time Observing Programme that is formulated by the CHEOPS Science Team, and the Guest Observers Programme through which the Community at large can apply for CHEOPS time.
