Hubble Space Telescope

Io and Júpiter

This image shows Jupiter's volcanic moon Io casting it's shadow on the clouds of the giant planet on July 24, 1996. Io is roughly the size of Earth's moon: 3,640 km across. The shadoww seeps across the face of Jupiter at 17 km per second.

Jupiter's Auroras

The black-and-white image on the left, taken in visible light, shows how Io and Jupiter are linked by an invisible electrical current of charged particles called a "flux tube." The particles - ejected from Io (the bright spot on Jupiter's right) by volcanic eruptions - flow along Jupiter's magnetic field lines, which thread through Io, to the planet's north and south magnetic poles.

The black-and-white image on the right, taken in ultraviolet light, shows Jupiter's auroral emissions at the north and south poles. Just outside these emissions are the auroral spots, called "footprints".

The two ultraviolet false-color images reveal how the magnetic field is offset from Jupiter's spin axis by 10 to 15 degrees.