ALMA detection of acetone, disulfur monoxide, and carbon monoxide in the Jupiter volcanic moon Io [EPA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2103.17018


The extremely thin atmosphere of the Jupiter volcanic moon Io primarily consists of sulfur (S), sodium (Na), and oxygen (O) molecules that are controlled by the combination of the sublimation and volcanic outgasses. We present the first spectroscopic detection of the two rotational emission lines of acetone (CH${3}$COCH${3}$), one single emission line of disulfur monoxide (S${2}$O), and a rotational absorptional line of CO at frequency $\nu$ = 346.539, 346.667, 346.543, and 345.795 GHz using high-resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) interferometer with band 7 observation. All molecular species are detected with $\ge$5$\sigma$ statistical significance. The Jupiter moon Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system with a very thin and spatially variable atmosphere. The volcanic gas CH${3}$COCH${3}$, S${2}$O, and CO are mainly coming from volcanic plumes. The statistical column density of CH${3}$COCH${3}$ line is N(CH${3}$COCH${3}$) = 6.92$\times$10$^{16}$ cm$^{-2}$ but for the cases of S${2}$O and CO, the column densities are N(S${2}$O) = 2.63$\times$10$^{16}$ cm$^{-2}$ and N(CO) = 5.27$\times$10$^{15}$ cm$^{-2}$ respectively. The carbon monoxide gas is mainly formed by the photolysis of the volcanic gas acetone.

Read this paper on arXiv…

A. Manna and S. Pal
Thu, 1 Apr 2021
7/71

Comments: 8 pages, 1 figure, comments are welcome