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Ridge Catches Sunset, Lava Spreads in Io Views from Galileo
December 9, 2002

In one newly released image of Jupiter's moon Io from NASA's Galileo spacecraft, a mountain ridge named Mongibello, three-fourths as tall as Mount Everest, gleams from the rays of an otherworldly sunset.

Other Io pictures that researchers are presenting at a scientific meeting show colorful volcanic deposits covering the ground and a recent lava flow. Galileo captured the images during flybys of Io in the past three years. The images and captions about them are available online from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03886, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03885, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03884, http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03887 and http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03888, and from the University of Arizona's Planetary Image Research Laboratory, Tucson, at http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/missions/Galileo/releases/ .

Scientists are studying Galileo data for a better understanding of Io's mountains and volcanoes. They are presenting the images in San Francisco during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union through Dec. 10.

Galileo has been orbiting Jupiter since December 1995. More information about the mission is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo . JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages Galileo for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.

Contact Information:
JPL/Guy Webster (818) 354-6278
University of Arizona/Lori Stiles (520) 626-4402