July 19, 1996
A birthday is what happens when cosmic time briefly puts down the scale of eons and pays attention to a single human year.
Galileo's First Color Image of Io
Birthday · July 19, 1996
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APOD published July 19, 1996. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Above is the first color image of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io released by the Galileo Project. (Io sounds like "eye-oh".) The image was made on June 25 when the Galileo spacecraft approached within 1.4 million miles. It reveals features as small as 14 miles across - comparable to the resolution of the best 1979 vintage Voyager images. The Voyager flybys discovered active volcanos on Io's mottled surface and this image indicates that dramatic changes have occurred since, notably in the region of the Masubi volcano located in Io's southern hemisphere. This region, apparently covered with new deposits of sulfur and sulfur dioxide frost deposited by volcanic eruption, is seen as the pronounced white area at the bottom of the picture. While scientists continue to analyze this image and other recent Galileo data the robot spacecraft will continue to explore Jupiter's moons. Its next scheduled close encounter is set for September 6th with the moon Ganymede. Higher resolution images of Io are also expected during the ongoing mission.