PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Volcano Loki observed from Earth

Large Binocular Telescope shows a lava lake on Jupiter's moon Io

Volcano Loki observed from Earth
2015-05-05
(Press-News.org) This news release is available in German.

With the first detailed observations of a lava lake on a moon of Jupiter, the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in Arizona places itself as the forerunner of the next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes. The applied high-resolution imaging methods were developed by an international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. Io, the innermost of the four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo in January 1610, is only slightly bigger than our own Moon but is the most geologically active body in our solar system. Hundreds of volcanic areas dot its surface, which is mostly covered with sulfur and sulfur dioxide.

The largest of these volcanic features, named Loki after the Norse god often associated with fire and chaos, is a volcanic depression called patera in which the denser lava crust solidifying on top of a lava lake episodically sinks in the lake, yielding a raise in the thermal emission which has been regularly observed from Earth. Loki, only 200km in diameter and at least 600 million km from Earth, was, up to recently, too small to be looked at in details from any ground based optical/infrared telescope.

With its two 8.4 m mirrors set on the same mount 6 m apart, the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) has been designed to ultimately provide images with the level of details a 22.8 m telescope would, by combining the light through interferometry. Thanks to the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI), an international team of researchers was able to look at Loki Patera in details for the first time from Earth in a study published today in the Astronomical Journal.

"We combine the light from two very large mirrors coherently so that they become a single, extremely large mirror," says Al Conrad, the lead of the study and a Scientist at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO). "In this way, for the first time we can measure the brightness coming from different regions within the lake."

For Phil Hinz, who leads the LBTI project at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory, this result is the outcome of a nearly fifteen year development. "We built LBTI to form extremely sharp images. It is gratifying to see the system work so well." Phil notes that this is only one of the unique aspects of LBTI. "We built the system both to form sharp images and to detect dust and planets around nearby stars at extremely high dynamic range. The new result from LBTI is a great example of its potential." LMIRcam, the camera recording the images at the very heart of LBTI in the 3 to 5 micrometers near-infrared band, was the thesis work of Jarron Leisenring as graduate student at the University of Virginia. For Jarron, now an instrument scientist for NIRCam (the Near InfraRed CAMera for the James Webb Space Telescope) at Steward Observatory, "these observations mark a major milestone for me and the instrument team. LMIRcam has already been very productive these past few years; now, interferometric combination provides the last step in harnessing LBTI's full potential and enabling a whole host of new scientific opportunities."

Many raw images delivered by LMIRcam are combined to form a single high-resolution image. "LBTI raw images are crossed by interference fringes. Therefore, these raw images do not look very sharp", explains Gerd Weigelt, a Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. "However, modern image reconstruction methods, so-called deconvolution, allow us to overcome the interference fringes and achieve a spectacular image resolution."

"While we have seen bright emissions - always one unresolved spot - "pop-up" at different locations in Loki Patera over the years", explains Imke de Pater, a Professor at the University of California in Berkeley, "these exquisite images from the LBTI show for the first time in ground based images that emissions arise simultaneously from different sites in Loki Patera. This strongly suggests that the horseshoe-shaped feature is most likely an active overturning lava lake, as hypothesized in the past."

For Christian Veillet, Director of the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO), "this study marks a very important milestone for the Observatory. The unique feature of the binocular design of the telescope, originally proposed more than 25 years ago, is its ability to provide images with the level of detail (resolution) only a single-aperture telescope at least 22.7m in diameter could reach. The spectacular observations of Io published today are a tribute to the many who believed in the LBT concept and worked very hard over more than two decades to reach this milestone."

Veillet adds: "While there is still much work ahead to make the LBT/LBTI combination a fully operational instrument, we can safely state that the Large Binocular Telescope is truly a forerunner of the next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes slated to see first light in a decade (or more) from now."

"Two of the volcanic features are at newly-active locations", explains Katherine de Kleer, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. "They are located in a region called the Colchis Regio, where an enormous eruption took place just a few months earlier, and may represent the aftermath of that eruption. The high resolution of the LBTI allows us to resolve the residual activity in this region into specific active sites, which could be lava flows or nearby eruptions."

"Studying the very dynamic volcanic activity on Io, which is constantly reshaping the moon's surface, provides clues to the interior structure and plumbing of this moon," remarked team member Chick Woodward of the University of Minnesota. "It helps to pave the way for future NASA missions such as the Io Observer. Io's highly elliptical orbit close to Jupiter is constantly tidally stressing the moon, like the squeezing of a ripe orange, where the juice can escape through cracks in the peel."

For Christian Veillet, Director of the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO), "this study marks a very important milestone for the Observatory. The unique feature of the binocular design of the telescope, originally proposed more than 25 years ago, is its ability to provide images with the level of detail (resolution) only a single-aperture telescope at least 22.7m in diameter could reach. The spectacular observations of Io published today are a tribute to the many who believed in the LBT concept and worked very hard over more than two decades to reach this milestone."

Veillet adds: "While there is still much work ahead to make the LBT/LBTI combination a fully operational instrument, we can safely state that the Large Binocular Telescope is truly a forerunner of the next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes slated to see first light in a decade or more from now."

INFORMATION:

Original paper: Albert Conrad et al.
Spatially resolved M-band emission from Io's Loki patera - Fizeau imaging at the 22.8m LBT
Astronomical Journal, 2015 doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/149/5/175


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Volcano Loki observed from Earth Volcano Loki observed from Earth 2

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

New methods for realistic surface rendering in computer games

New methods for realistic surface rendering in computer games
2015-05-05
This news release is available in German. Overturning cars, flying missiles, and airplanes speeding across the screen -- on modern computers, 3D objects can be calculated in a flash. However, many surfaces still look unnatural. Whether it is skin, stone or wax -- on the computer screen, all materials look alike, as if the objects had all been cut out of the same kind of opaque material. This is about to change: TU Wien (Vienna), the University of Zaragoza and the video game company Activision-Blizzard have developed a new mathematical method which makes surfaces appear ...

How our view of what makes us happy has changed in 80 years

2015-05-05
Our view of what makes us happy has changed markedly since 1938. That is the conclusion of the psychologist Sandie McHugh from the Univeristy of Bolton who has recreated a famous study of happiness conducted in Bolton in 1938. She will present her study today, Tuesday 5 May 2015, to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society in Liverpool. In 1938 Mass Observation placed an advertisement in the the Bolton Evening News asking readers to answer the question 'What is happiness?'. A total of 226 people sent letters in reply, and they were asked to help compile ...

'Freezing a bullet' to find clues to ribosome assembly process

Freezing a bullet to find clues to ribosome assembly process
2015-05-05
Ribosomes are vital to the function of all living cells. Using the genetic information from RNA, these large molecular complexes build proteins by linking amino acids together in a specific order. Scientists have known for more than half a century that these cellular machines are themselves made up of about 80 different proteins, called ribosomal proteins, along with several RNA molecules and that these components are added in a particular sequence to construct new ribosomes, but no one has known the mechanism that controls that process. Now researchers from Caltech and ...

New centimeter-accurate GPS system could transform virtual reality and mobile devices

2015-05-05
AUSTIN, Texas -- Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones and other technologies, making global positioning and orientation far more precise than what is currently available on a mobile device. The researchers' new system could allow unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver packages to a specific spot on a consumer's back porch, enable collision avoidance technologies on cars and allow virtual ...

Changing attitudes about sex

2015-05-05
SAN DIEGO, Calif. (May 5, 2015)-- Acceptance of premarital sex is at an all-time high along with an acceptance of homosexuality, find researchers led by Jean M. Twenge from San Diego State University. The researchers -- also including Ryne Sherman from Florida Atlantic University and Brooke E. Wells from Hunter College -- analyzed data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey of more than 33,000 U.S. adults taken between 1972 and 2012. They found substantial generational shifts in attitudes toward non-marital sex and number of sexual partners. ...

Proteomics provides new leads into nerve regeneration

2015-05-05
Using proteomics techniques to study injured optic nerves, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have identified previously unrecognized proteins and pathways involved in nerve regeneration. Adding back one of these proteins--the oncogene c-myc--they achieved unprecedented optic nerve regeneration in mice when combined with two other known strategies. The findings were published online April 30 by the journal Neuron. Researchers have been trying for many decades to get injured nerves in the brain and spinal cord to regenerate. Various molecules have been targeted ...

Shedding light on rods

2015-05-05
"Imagine a tiny spotlight like those used in theatres but with a light ray measuring only a few nanometres, which shines light on a given spot but leaves everything else in the dark," explains Monica Mazzolini, SISSA research scientist, "That's how the optic fibres we used in our experiment work". Mazzolini, first author of a paper just published in PNAS, literally shut herself in a "darkroom" lit with infrared light only to stimulate rods, the light-sensitive cells of the retina (for night vision), with these extremely focused light beams in vitro. In their study, Mazzolini ...

Women hospitalized 60 percent more than men after emergency asthma treatment

2015-05-05
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (May 5, 2015) - While it may be a stereotype, it's also true that women seek medical care more frequently than men do. And a recent study shows that women with acute asthma who are treated in the emergency department (ED) are 60 percent more likely than men treated in the ED to need hospitalization. The study, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), looked at the sex differences in patient characteristics, and risk of hospitalizations ...

Bystander CPR helps cardiac arrest survivors return to work

2015-05-04
DALLAS, May 4, 2015 -- More bystanders performing CPR contributed to more cardiac arrest survivors returning to work in a Danish study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. In the largest study to date to examine return to work after cardiac arrest, researchers studied 4,354 patients in Denmark who were employed before they suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests between 2001 to 2011. Researchers found: More than 75 percent of survivors who had a cardiac arrest outside a hospital were capable of returning to work. Chances of returning ...

An unexpected role for calcium in controlling inflammation during chronic lung infection

2015-05-04
Many of us take a healthy immune system for granted. But for certain infants with rare, inherited mutations of certain genes, severe infection and death are stark consequences of their impaired immune responses. Now, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have identified an important role for calcium signaling in immune responses to chronic infection resulting from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium causing tuberculosis (TB). Specifically, they determined that the immune systems in genetically altered mice lacking the critically important calcium channel ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Thirty-year mystery of dissonance in the “ringing” of black holes explained

Less intensive works best for agricultural soil

Arctic rivers project receives “national champion” designation from frontiers foundation

Computational biology paves the way for new ALS tests

Study offers new hope for babies born with opioid withdrawal syndrome

UT, Volkswagen Group of America celebrate research partnership

New Medicare program could dramatically improve affordability for cancer drugs – if patients enroll

Are ‘zombie’ skin cells harmful or helpful? The answer may be in their shapes

University of Cincinnati Cancer Center presents research at AACR 2025

Head and neck, breast, lung and survivorship studies headline Dana-Farber research at AACR Annual Meeting 2025

AACR: Researchers share promising results from MD Anderson clinical trials

New research explains why our waistlines expand in middle age

Advancements in muon detection: Taishan Antineutrino Observatory's innovative top veto tracker

Chips off the old block

Microvascular decompression combined with nerve combing for atypical trigeminal neuralgia

Cutting the complexity from digital carpentry

Lung immune cell type “quietly” controls inflammation in COVID-19

Fiscal impact of expanded Medicare coverage for GLP-1 receptor agonists to treat obesity

State and sociodemographic trends in US cigarette smoking with future projections

Young adults drive historic decline in smoking

NFCR congratulates Dr. Robert C. Bast, Jr. on receiving the AACR-Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research

Chimpanzee stem cells offer new insights into early embryonic development

This injected protein-like polymer helps tissues heal after a heart attack

FlexTech inaugural issue launches, pioneering interdisciplinary innovation in flexible technology

In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity

Methyl eugenol: potential to inhibit oxidative stress, address related diseases, and its toxicological effects

A vascularized multilayer chip reveals shear stress-induced angiogenesis in diverse fluid conditions

AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer's disease and identify a therapeutic candidate

Coalition of Autism Scientists critiques US Department of Health and Human Services Autism Research Initiative

Structure dictates effectiveness, safety in nanomedicine

[Press-News.org] Volcano Loki observed from Earth
Large Binocular Telescope shows a lava lake on Jupiter's moon Io