A History of High-Temperature Io Volcanism, February 1995 to May 1997
J. Spencer, J. Stansberry, C. Dumas, D. Vakil, R. Pregler, M. Hicks, and K. Hege
Geophysical Research Letters 24, 2451-2454.
Preprint available in compressed postscript form, including
figures from here, or if
that doesn't work, try anonymous ftp to ftp.lowell.edu, pub/spencer,
and get file iohist97.ps.Z. File size is 260 kbytes
Abstract (submitted version):
Ground-based observations of Io's infrared thermal emission
between February 1995 and November 1996, preceding and spanning the
time of Galileo's first three Jupiter orbits, show several discrete
brightenings for which we can constrain locations, fluxes, and
durations. Several of these were brief high-temperature events, with
temperatures up to at least 1500 K, of a type not seen before. Loki,
Io's most powerful volcano, was relatively active before and probably
during Galileo's December 1995 Io flyby, but was faint during most of
1996. Thermal emission was not seen from Ra Patera, site of an active
plume in Galileo images. Major 5-micron outbursts were seen on March
2nd and September 27 1995, but about twenty additional outbursts
probably went undetected in the same period.
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