Ios Hot Spots in the Nearinfrared Detected by LEISA During the New Horizons Flyby
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
PUBLICATIONS Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets RESEARCH ARTICLE Io’s hot spots in the near-infrared detected by LEISA 10.1002/2014JE004670 during the New Horizons flyby Key Points: Constantine C. C. Tsang1, Julie A. Rathbun2, John R. Spencer1, Brigette E. Hesman3, and Oleg Abramov4 • Io’s nightside near-infrared thermal emissions mapped 1Department of Space Studies, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2Department of Physics, University of • A total of 36 hot spots detected, 4 new 3 hot spots Redlands, Redlands, California, USA, Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA, 4 • Global coverage on the nightside Astrogeology Science Center, United States Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA Abstract The New Horizons spacecraft flew past Jupiter and its moons in February and March 2007. The Correspondence to: flyby provided one of the most comprehensive inventories of Io’s active plumes and hot spots yet taken, C. C. C. Tsang, [email protected] including the large 350 km high eruption of Tvashtar. Among the suite of instruments active during the flyby was the Linear Etalon Infrared Spectral Array (LEISA), a near-infrared imaging spectrometer covering the spectral range 1.25 to 2.5 μm. We have identified 37 distinct hot spots on Io in the nine LEISA spectral Citation: fl fi Tsang, C. C. C., J. A. Rathbun, J. R. Spencer, imagecubestakenduringthe yby. We describe the thermal emissions from these volcanoes and t B. E. Hesman, and O. Abramov (2014), single-component blackbody curves to the hot spot spectra to derive eruption temperatures, areas, and Io’s hot spots in the near-infrared power output for the hot spots with sufficient signal-to-noise. Of these, 11 hot spots were seen by LEISA more detected by LEISA during the New Horizons flyby, J. Geophys. Res. Planets, than once, and East Girru showed short-term variability over a few days, also seen by other New Horizons 119, 2222–2238 doi:10.1002/ instruments. This work presents a comprehensive look at the global distribution of Io’s volcanism at the time of 2014JE004670. the flyby. From these measurements, we estimate the global power output of high-temperature (>550 K) volcanism on Io to be ~8 TW. This work provides the first short-wavelength near-infrared survey with global Received 19 MAY 2014 Accepted 17 SEP 2014 coverage at all longitudes on the nightside of Io without sunlight contamination at these wavelengths. A major Accepted article online 19 SEP 2014 conclusion from this study is that 90% of all the volcanoes observed in the New Horizons LEISA near-infrared Published online 16 OCT 2014 data in 2007 were also observed during the Galileo epoch, suggesting these are all long-lived hot spots. 1. Introduction Since the discovery of active volcanism on Io in 1979 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft [Pearl et al., 1979], Io has been extensively observed and studied in an attempt to understand the source and the driving mechanisms of its widespread volcanism. Numerous studies of Ionian volcanoes have focused on their spatial distribution [Williams et al., 2011; Veeder et al., 2012], physical characteristics such as temperature and emitted areas [e.g., Allen et al., 2013], temporal variability [e.g., Davies and Ennis, 2011; Rathbun and Spencer, 2010], eruption style [e.g., Davies et al., 2006], and emitted power [e.g., Davies, 2003]. The Galileo spacecraft notably provided the most detailed snapshot of these volcanoes over 20 orbits between 1996 and 2001. Continued long-term ground-based observations of Io’svolcanism,ateverimproving spatial resolutions, especially in the near-infrared [e.g., Marchis et al., 2005], can provide the ability to study the temporal variability of hot spots over decadal timescales [e.g., Rathbun and Spencer, 2006]. However, only a few ground-based observatories have the ability to spatially resolve more than a few of the brightest individual hot spots at all Io longitudes. In this study, we present estimates of temperatures, emitting areas, and powers of 17 volcanoes, from a total of some 37 detected volcanoes observed at all longitudes, from the New Horizons flyby of Io in 2007. By doing so, we provide a rare instantaneous homogeneous inventory of the global distribution of high-temperature Io volcanism, as the flyby covered all longitude ranges on Io. 2. New Horizon LEISA Observations The New Horizons spacecraft was launched in January 2006 and will arrive at Pluto in 2015. One of the instruments on board is Ralph, which consists of two subsystems, MVIC, the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera and LEISA, the Linear Etalon Infrared Spectral Array. The analysis of the MVIC data on Io’s hot spots during the New Horizons flyby of Io is presented in Rathbun et al. [2014]. Here we present the LEISA observations from that same flyby. LEISA covers the wavelength region between 1.25 and 2.5 μm, at spectral resolving powers of ~240, with a higher-resolving power segment (R ~ 540) covering 2.1 to 2.25 μm. Both TSANG ET AL. ©2014. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. 2222 Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 10.1002/2014JE004670 segments share the same detector array. Each row on the detector is sensitive to a particular wavelength. The target is scanned across the rows, resulting in a 256 × 256 × N (spatial [x], spatial + spectral [y + λ], temporal [t]) pixel image cube with a 62 μrad per pixel field of view, where N is depends on the scan rate and duration of each scan. For the Io observations, N = 356 temporal frames. These cubes can be rectified to produce conventional x, y, λ spatial/spectral image cubes, though we did not do this for the present analysis. In this work, we only use the lower resolution 1.25–2.5 μm segment due to the wider spectral sample [Reuter et al., 2008]. New Horizons flew by Io in February 2007, with closest approach occurring on 28 February at a range of 2.26 million km, with LEISA observations ranging from this closest approach to a distance of 3.04 million km. Other remote sensing observations of Io including monochromatic and color images [Spencer et al., 2007; Rathbun et al., 2014] and ultraviolet spectra [Retherford et al., 2007] were taken. Initial analysis of the detected hot spots and temperatures from LEISA was presented in Spenceretal.[2007].LEISAtooka total of nine spectral image cubes in the near-infrared, presented here in full. Io was observed at solar phase angles ranging from 36° to 120°, some when Io was in eclipse (Table 1). 2.1. Data Calibration We use Level 2 calibrated data taken from NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS). The Level 2 data include the observed radiances and wavelengths at each pixel, and the ephemeris required to interpret the data. Further detail can be found in Reuter et al. [2008]. The PDS calibration is inaccurate, and the LEISA spectra presented in Spenceretal. [2007, hereinafter referred to as S07] used a different method of arriving at the radiometric calibration that does not provide the best possible calibration for fluxes.Wehavetherefore improved the radiometric calibration for this work. An accurate radiometric calibration is important because any uncertainty in the absolute radiances can lead to uncertainty in the derived area of hot spots, while wavelength-dependent changes in the radiance lead to changes in the derived temperatures. To better determine the absolute radiances, we compared LEISA spectra taken from the standard star Vega, between 2001 and 2006 during cruise, with its well characterized 1–2.5 μm spectra from other works [Castelli and Kurucz, 1994]. The LEISA spectrum of Vega was divided by the standard Vega spectrum to produce a wavelength-dependent calibration correction. This was done three separate times during annual checkout (ACO) observations 2 (18 October 2008), 4 (24 June 2010), and 6 (1 June 2012). The average of these spectra was used as the final conversion (Figure 1), which we applied to all Level 2 (L2) radiometric values from the PDS. 2.2. Data Reduction We extract hot spot spectra in each observation using the following procedure. We take the spectral image cube (x, y + λ, t) and adjust for the motion of Io along the time (t) dimension. We then coadd the registered (x, y + λ) frames to produce a color composite image to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in order to identify the locations of the hot spots. We produce image composites (Figures 3–9) using approximately 100 frames in total per observation, with frames between approximately 1.7–1.9 μmfor blue, 1.9–2.2 μm for green, and 2.2–2.4 μm for red. The contrast is stretched to highlight the hot spots on the nightside of Io, saturating the dayside. We calculate the pixel positions of each hot spot relative to a bright reference hot spot such as Tvashtar or East Girru such that the bright reference hot spot can be tracked in each of the individual spectral frames. We do this because faint hot spots are difficult to observe and track at individual frames, particularly at shorter wavelengths. The tracking of the bright reference offset hot spot is usually done by manually stepping through each spectral frame and identifying the bright reference hot spot. This is difficult to do with an automatic algorithm because of confusion from “hot” pixels caused by cosmic rays or instrument noise. The positions of each hot spot are accurate to a pixel. As described below, this precision is sufficient to identify these hot spots, but not to determine if these hot spots have moved in location since Galileo observations. Observations by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and MVIC instruments of Io’s hot spot in a companion work [Rathbun et al., 2014] were able to distinguish spatial movement of volcanic features.