The first movie ever made of Jupiter's moon Io while it is in eclipse shows bright spots of hot lava and changes in auroral glows. These images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft provide evidence that the auroras originate in electrical currents that connect Io and Jupiter along magnetic-field lines.Other images by the Cassini imaging team show auroras on the dark side of Jupiter itself, near both of the planet's poles. Jupiter's south pole aurora had never been imaged from the planet's night side before.
The images are available from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at this URL.
Cassini made its closest pass to Jupiter on Dec. 30, 2000, gaining a gravitational boost for reaching its main destination, Saturn, in 2004. It will continue to make observations and measurements of the Jupiter system through March 2001.
More information about joint studies of Jupiter by Cassini and NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for more than five years, is available at this URL.
Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini and Galileo missions for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
[Contact: Ashwin Vasavada ]
07-Feb-2001
