Temperature and Variability of Three Ionian Volcanoes

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Temperature and Variability of Three Ionian Volcanoes Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2010-08-10 Temperature and Variability of Three Ionian Volcanoes Daniel R. Allen Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the Astrophysics and Astronomy Commons, and the Physics Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Allen, Daniel R., "Temperature and Variability of Three Ionian Volcanoes" (2010). Theses and Dissertations. 2591. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2591 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Temperature and Variability of Three Ionian Volcanoes Daniel R. Allen A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Denise C. Stephens, Advisor Jani Radebaugh Clark G. Christensen Department of Physics and Astronomy Brigham Young University December 2010 Copyright c 2010 Daniel R. Allen All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Temperature and Variability of Three Ionian Volcanoes Daniel R. Allen Department of Physics and Astronomy Master of Science Cassini spacecraft images of Io obtained during its flyby of Jupiter in late 2000 and early 2001 were used to determine the lava composition and eruption style of three faint hotspots, Pillan, Wayland, and Loki. We found a maximum color temperature of 1130±289 K for Pillan and maximum color temperatures of 1297±289 K and 1387±287 K for Wayland and Loki, respectively. These temperatures are suggestive of basaltic lava. The temperatures with the best signal-to-noise ratios also suggested basaltic lava and were found to be 780±189 K, 1116±250 K, and 1017±177 K for Pillan, Wayland, and Loki, respectively. Pillan showed increased activity on the third eclipse day after being fairly constant for the first two days, suggesting increased fountaining or lava flow activity on the third day. The data also suggest that Pillan is surrounded by topography that blocked emission on day000 and caused a much more dramatic decrease in emission. Wayland's intensity decreased over the three eclipses, consistent with a cooling lava flow or decreasing eruption. However, rapid decreases in intensity over periods of 26 to 48 minutes could have resulted from the eruption of highly exposed lava, perhaps an open channel or fountain. The data also suggest Wayland may be in a depression surrounded by ridges that blocked part of the emission. Intensities at Loki over the course of the observation varied in both directions, and were consistent with previous determinations of an often quiescent lava lake with periods of active overturning and fountains. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my committee for all of their help during the entire process from the analysis to the calculations to the writing. Their guidance and suggestions taught me many things and greatly improved not only the final product, but also my research and writing skills. I want to thank Dr. Jani Radebaugh for the idea of what to study and for her guidance on volcanoes and Io. It was a topic I knew very little about before this project but have grown to love. A huge thanks goes to Dr. Denise Stephens for making me work hard and greatly improving my thesis. Her help with the final image and error analysis was indispensable. I also want to thank Dr. Clark Christensen for serving as my committee chair during most of my thesis research. He was always available for signatures and filling out forms. I also couldn't have done this without Dr. Ben Taylor's help with the statistics and errors. Finally, I want to thank my family who supported me and stood by me when it felt like I would never be finished. Kathleen was my biggest cheerleader and kept me going. Symphany's smiling face when I came home after a long day at school made it all worthwhile. Contents Table of Contents iv List of Tables vi List of Figures vii 1 Introduction and Background1 1.1 Motivation.....................................1 1.2 Io Volcanism and Tidal Heating.........................2 1.3 History of Observations..............................6 1.4 Cassini Spacecraft and Mission.........................9 2 Data and Reduction Procedures 12 2.1 Cassini and the Raw Data............................ 12 2.2 Data Reduction Procedures........................... 15 2.3 Data Difficulties.................................. 20 3 Color Temperatures 23 3.1 Finding Color Temperatures........................... 23 3.1.1 Expected Blackbody Response Curve.................. 24 3.1.2 Signals and Ratios............................ 26 3.2 IR Signal Strength................................ 26 3.3 Color Temperatures and Lava Compositions.................. 30 4 Variations in Emission 33 4.1 Finding Variations................................ 33 4.1.1 Emission Angle.............................. 34 4.1.2 Electron Flux............................... 35 4.2 Eruption Styles.................................. 37 5 Discussion and Conclusions 47 Bibliography 50 iv v CONTENTS A Error Analysis 59 A.1 Signal Errors................................... 59 A.2 Monte Carlo Temperature Errors........................ 60 A.3 Electron Flux Errors............................... 60 B Plots 62 B.1 Essential Plots.................................. 62 B.2 Other Plots.................................... 70 C IRAF Packages and Parameters 71 Index 75 List of Tables 1.1 Details of Cassini eclipse observations...................... 10 2.1 Table of images for Pillan and Wayland..................... 14 2.2 Table of images for Loki............................. 15 3.1 Pillan temp. confidence analysis......................... 28 3.2 Wayland temp. confidence analysis....................... 29 3.3 Loki temp. confidence analysis.......................... 29 3.4 Table of color temperatures........................... 32 vi List of Figures 1.1 Explosive volcanism................................4 1.2 Tupan patera...................................5 1.3 Prominent hotspots................................ 11 2.1 Image hum.................................... 17 2.2 Gstatistics program in IRAF........................... 18 2.3 Artificial background image........................... 19 2.4 Low signal in the IR............................... 21 3.1 Expected blackbody response curve....................... 25 3.2 Io glow and Loki day364 signal comparison................... 30 3.3 Io glow and Loki day001 signal comparison................... 31 4.1 Emission angle defined.............................. 34 4.2 Temperature vs. emission angle for Pillan................... 38 4.3 Electron flux vs. emission angle for Pillan................... 39 4.4 Temperature vs. emission angle for Wayland.................. 40 4.5 Electron flux vs. emission angle for Wayland.................. 41 4.6 Galileo SSI image of Wayland.......................... 42 4.7 Variation with time plot for Loki........................ 43 4.8 Erta Ale lava lake, Ethiopia........................... 44 4.9 Approximate subspacecraft position of Cassini on Io's surface......... 46 B.1 Essential Pillan plots............................... 63 B.2 Essential time Pillan plots............................ 64 B.3 Essential Wayland plots............................. 65 B.4 Essential time Wayland plots.......................... 66 B.5 Essential Loki plots................................ 67 B.6 Essential time Loki plots............................. 68 B.7 Averaged temperature and flux vs time plots.................. 69 B.8 A check of the background hum......................... 70 C.1 Phot parameters in IRAF............................ 72 vii viii LIST OF FIGURES C.2 Centerpars parameters in IRAF......................... 72 C.3 Datapars parameters in IRAF.......................... 73 C.4 Fitskypars parameters in IRAF......................... 73 C.5 Photpars parameters in IRAF.......................... 74 Chapter 1 Introduction and Background 1.1 Motivation A study of the surface of Jupiter's volcanically active moon, Io, provides insight into what the surface of the Earth and other planets may have been like billions of years ago. The primordial Earth was a much hotter, more violent world than the one we see today (Matson et al., 1998; Vlaar et al., 1994). The surface was covered with active volcanoes whose distribution and activity slowly waned as the Earth cooled (Vlaar et al., 1994). Other planets in the solar system were similarly active in the past (Christiansen and Hamblin, 1995). Today, only Io shows the same level of volcanic activity that must have existed on the primordial Earth and other planets. We can study Io to get a better understanding of what types of volcanic activity may have existed on the surface of the early Earth. Studying Io also provides insight into the dissipation of heat as it relates to other tidally heated bodies. Because of its small size, Io should have cooled long ago, but tidal friction from Io's gravitational interaction with Jupiter and the other Galilean moons (Peale et al., 1979) produces heat that keeps the interior molten. The energy produced by tidal friction escapes to the surface through volcanic activity. Studying the distribution and nature of 1 2 Chapter 1 Introduction and Background Io's hotspots provides clues about its interior structure and how heat is being dissipated (Lopes-Gautier et al., 1999; Lopes et al.,
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