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Science 19 May 2000:
Vol. 288. no. 5469, pp. 1204 - 1208
DOI: 10.1126/science.288.5469.1204
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Reports

Prometheus: Io's Wandering Plume

Susan W. Kieffer, 1* Rosaly Lopes-Gautier, 2 Alfred McEwen, 3 William Smythe, 2 Laszlo Keszthelyi, 3 Robert Carlson 2

Unlike any volcanic behavior ever observed on Earth, the plume from Prometheus on Io has wandered 75 to 95 kilometers west over the last 20 years since it was first discovered by Voyager and more recently observed by Galileo. Despite the source motion, the geometric and optical properties of the plume have remained constant. We propose that this can be explained by vaporization of a sulfur dioxide and/or sulfur "snowfield" over which a lava flow is moving. Eruption of a boundary-layer slurry through a rootless conduit with sonic conditions at the intake of the melted snow can account for the constancy of plume properties.

1 S. W. Kieffer Science Consulting, Inc., 6 Queen Street, Suite 206, Post Office Box 520, Bolton, ON L7E 5T4, Canada.
2 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
3 Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: skieffer{at}geyser.com

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Flood Basalts, Basalt Floods or Topless Bushvelds? Lunar Petrogenesis Revisited.
M. J. O'HARA (2000)
J. Petrology 41, 1545-1651
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Galileo at Io: Results from High-Resolution Imaging.
A. S. McEwen, M. J. Belton, H. H. Breneman, S. A. Fagents, P. Geissler, R. Greeley, J. W. Head, G. Hoppa, W. L. Jaeger, T. V. Johnson, et al. (2000)
Science 288, 1193-1198
   Abstract »    Full Text »
A Close-Up Look at Io from Galileo's Near-Infrared Mapping Spectrometer.
R. Lopes-Gautier, S. Douté, W. D. Smythe, L. W. Kamp, R. W. Carlson, A. G. Davies, F. E. Leader, A. S. McEwen, P. E. Geissler, S. W. Kieffer, et al. (2000)
Science 288, 1201-1204
   Abstract »    Full Text »


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