Looking Into Io’s Loki Patera (Artist’s Concept)

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Created using data collected by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, this animation is an artist’s concept that shows an aerial view of Loki Patera, a lava lake on the Jovian moon Io. The 124-mile-long (200-kilometer-long) lake is filled with magma, rimmed with hot lava, and dotted with islands. Loki provided a spectacular reflection when imaged by JunoCam during flybys of the moon in December 2023 and February 2024, suggesting it and other parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass.

The large island in Loki Patera does not have a name.

JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at https://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing. More information about NASA citizen science can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/citizenscience and https://www.nasa.gov/solve/opportunities/citizenscience.

More information about Juno is at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.swri.edu. For more about this finding and other science results, see https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/science-findings.