With the help of a large binocular telescope located in the mountains of Pienaleno, Arizona, Jupiter was eclipsed, and this should have turned our attention to the number of satellite planets that are in the solar system.
On the one hand, the satellite Europe, which has an ice-covered surface and the ocean, can become a home for humanity and also serve as a habitat for marine inhabitants. But if you look at it from the other side, we have a magma-coated satellite surface where there is a risk of powerful eruptions. The differences are obvious - Europe, where it is possible to live and the Moon with its volcanoes - they are controlled by one factor - the direction of Jupiter.
As the closest Galilean satellite in the Jupiter system with a nonstandard orbit, the satellite impedes the movement of Jupiter, on which, due to the fact that it passes near a massive planet, tidal changes are tracked. This creates an internal generator, due to which in Europe, the diameter of which is 3,120 km, the risk of eruptions increases. This effect sometimes becomes too strong and magma emissions occur. Even when Europe, to go a little further, the satellite still feels the influence on itself, but it is not so serious.
Under a thick layer of ice, there is an ocean that does not freeze due to the tides on Jupiter, thereby putting pressure on the core of Europe.
Today, through the use of two large binocular telescopes (8, 4 m), one can observe the features of the satellite, which were not previously known. A wide unified lake of magma was discovered, which occupies a surface 124 miles wide. It was named Loki, in honor of the god of fire and chaos, there cooled lava floats on the surface of the molten rock. From time to time, the upper layers are immersed in magma, creating a surge of thermal emissions that can be observed from the Earth.
With the help of the new telescope mentioned above, it became possible to study this lake.
“We consistently connected the light reflected by two very large mirrors, so that one huge mirror was formed,” says Al Conrad, an exercise at the observatory using large binocular telescopes, also the author of a study published in The Astrophysical Journal. “Thus, for the first time, we have the opportunity to measure the brightness of light coming from different points of this lake.”
“While we were seeing one bright flash, there was always a new place elsewhere for many years,” says Inca de Pater from the University of California, Berkeley.
When such powerful telescopes concentrate their attention on individual satellites, we begin to understand exactly how they were formed. The fact that we are seeing eruptions in Europe is a timely reminder that there are many different phenomena.
