Mystery Photo

What in the world is it?

Don’t peek at the answer until you’ve given this a good try! Then, scroll down a bit and the truth will be revealed to you. What In the World Is It? No, it’s not a lump on a cell. This mystery photo is a false-color infrared image of the Sunlit disk of Jupiter’s moon Io taken at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Okay, so what’s the lump at the 1 o’clock position? It’s a lava fountain seen at a distance of 630 million kilometers (390 million miles). When this image was taken, the fiery lava fountain was almost on the edge of Io’s disk and about to disappear from view due to Io’s rotation. What’s also special about this image is that it was taken only a few hours after a November 25th, 1999, close Io flyby by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Credit: (NASA Infrared Telescope Facility) Back