June 23, 1997
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us, and yet here you are — a collection of atoms that somehow learned to think, to...
Eruption on Io
Birthday · June 23, 1997
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APOD published June 23, 1997. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
There it goes again. Gas and rock were catapulted hundreds of kilometers into space as Jupiter's most volatile moon, Io, showed yet another impressive volcanic display in this just-released photograph by the Hubble Space Telescope. This time the culprit was Pele, a volcano thought previously inactive since photographed by the passing Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1979. The explosion is visible on Io's lower left in this false-color photograph, taken in July 1996. Io's thin atmosphere and low gravity allow volcanic plumes to rise higher than they would on Earth.