You need to upgrade your Flash Player The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular “terrestrial worlds”, places that tend to have surfaces on which one could walk or at least attach oneself to. These places sometimes also have other earth-like familiar features such as atmospheres, weather, volcanos, geysers and perhaps, we are finding, even exotic oceans, rivers or lakes that are not necessarily made of familiar materials we are used to here at home. The second theme is imagery. Occasionally I do some retouching of images when needed if an image is incomplete or sometimes “dirty” or noisy. I will attempt to correct image shortcomings based upon other images or well-accepted presumed attributes. When this is done, notes will be offered as to what was added, why and sometimes how it was done. This way no one should ever wonder if something they are looking at is real or photoshop.
« Wallpaper: Ida and Dactyl
Life in the Hood: Europa »

Wallpaper: Volcanism and Calderas on Io

Wallpaper: Calderas on Io

This caldera is named Tvashtar Catena and was imaged in 2000. Earlier in 1999 the region appeared as seen at below-left. Clearly the progress made in a volcanic year on Io is incredible… just for reference, Tvashtar Catena Beforethe region pictured here is larger tha the Grand Canyon here on Earth. Imagine something that large here on Earth changing that much in one year.

Io stands alone in our Solar System in terms of geological activity, but an interesting relationship can be drawn from what is seen on Io and what is seen in Europa’s internal ocean. The same stresses coming from Jupiter which heat and tear Io apart are the same ones, which at a safer distance, internally heat Europa’s oceans. Leading us to believe that had Io been even closer to Jupiter its very stability would come into question. Looking further out at Ganymede, evidence suggests that it may as well experience some of this internal heating and could also contain a vast water ocean much further below a thinker icy crust than Europa. The right 1/3 of this image was generated based upon textures in the main image to the left (hence the lack of any details). So only the left 2/3 of this image is actual. I added the rest simply to fill out the proportion for the wallpaper. There may for all I know be a vast mountain range that begins in that area, but alas… i have depicted it as flat. But the rest is the real deal my friend.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 10:08 am and is filed under 1440x900, Io, Wallpaper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply