Jupiter

Io: a spongy world consumed by molten rock

Anna Katsigera April 30, 2025

Volcano Erupts on Io (Credit: NASA, NASA-JPL, DLR)

Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in our solar system, with hundreds of volcanoes that constantly erupt on its ever renewing surface. Although Io always points the same side toward Jupiter in its orbit around the gas giant, two other Galilean moons, Europa and Ganymede, pull Io’s orbit into an irregularly elliptical one. Thus, in its widely varying distances from ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: meet Georgia Moutsiana, researcher of Jupiter’s magnetosphere!

Simon Clark December 2, 2024

Georgia Moutsiana

Hello Georgia – welcome to GeoTalk! Could you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your background? Thank you, Simon! I’m Georgia Moutsiana, a space scientist and PhD candidate at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. My research focuses on understanding the processes that accelerate and transport charged particles in planetary magnetospheres. My key message is th ...[Read More]

Tectonics on Ice…. learning about Jupiter’s Icy Moons and the JUICE mission.

Hazel Gibson January 25, 2023

Image credit: USGS Astrogeology Science Center/Wheaton/NASA/JPL-Caltech

In April this year a new mission is being launched by the European Space Agency, called JUICE, which stands for the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. This mission aims to make detailed observations of the giant gas planet Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. But beyond the excitement of a ne ...[Read More]

NASA’s Juno mission reveals Jupiter’s magnetic field greatly differs from Earth’s

Keri McNamara July 18, 2018

The Juno probe flew 2.8 billion kilometres between its launch from earth and insertion into orbit around Jupiter. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA scientists have revealed surprising new information about Jupiter’s magnetic field from data gathered by their space probe, Juno. Unlike earth’s magnetic field, which is symmetrical in the North and South Poles, Jupiter’s magnetic field has startlingly different magnetic signatures at the two poles. The information has been collected as part of the Juno program, NASA’s latest mission to unrav ...[Read More]