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LiveScience
LiveScience
Stephanie Pappas

NASA reveals 'glass-smooth lake of cooling lava' on surface of Jupiter's moon Io

A visualization of the glass lava lake spotted on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io.

A new animation reveals an enormous lava lake on the surface of Jupiter's moon Io. 

The close-up view comes from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which swept within 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the volcanic surface of Io in December 2023 and January 2024. These flybys provided the closest look ever at Jupiter's innermost large moon. Io hosts hundreds of active volcanoes. According to NASA, their eruptions are sometimes so powerful that they can be seen with telescopes on Earth. 

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