It may look like a pizza...

but it's actually a new map of the surface of Io, one of Jupiter's moons and the most volcanically active body in the solar system:

More here at the USGS: Geologic Map of Io.

Image credit: Wired.com.

Jupiter's moon Europa...

is target for possible NASA lander.  Why?  "Europa, I think, is the premier place to go for extant life" said one scientist.

But apparently NASA didn't get the message about not landing there.

Juno heading to Jove...

with its liftoff today at 8:34 am PDT, the beginning of a five-year long voyage to the gas giant.  Juno's primary goal is to "understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter."

Here's NASA's Juno mission page.  Watch the launch on NASA-TV.

Hey, maybe we'll discover it has a solid core made of diamond.

Mission to Europa...

has been given priority status by NASA and the European Space Agency.  The proposed Europa Jupiter System Mission will launch no sooner than 2020, and it unfortunately does not include a lander.  Despite the mission's name, Io's dynamic sulfur-spewing volcanoes will also be investigated by the orbiters.

Jupiter gets smacked again...

Big Fireball on Jupiter Spotted by Amateur Astronomers

Previous related post.

This is interesting...

Jupiter loses one of its stripes and scientists are stumped as to why.

I believe it's a harbinger of December 2012.

Jovian Eden...

on Europa? Article: Europa Capable of Supporting Life, Scientist Says. The global ice-covered ocean, coupled with an abundance of oxygen, could provide optimum conditions for life.

Link to abstract.

Image courtesy NASA.

Preparing for a robotic visit...

to a distant moon: Landing sites on Europa identified.

Faster, please.

Dissipating impact scar...

near the south polar region of Jupiter, presented as a time lapse move spanning the last three weeks. The impact site is marked by the black smudge, just to the upper right of center. A series of still images have been converted to polar projection and stitched together by clever amateur astronomers, and presented courtesy of Spaceweather.com.

Related previous post.

There's nothing stupider...

than being a professional astronomer and missing the object that hit Jupiter. Well, that is certainly an overstatement but at least it rhymes. But in reality they did get trumped by an amateur in discovering the most important event to occur in the solar system in the last 15 years, so now they're playing catch up:

Astronomers Look for Clues in the Wake of the Jupiter Collision.

My previous related posts are here and here.

Recent impact site on Jupiter...

has been imaged by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope (HST) yesterday (click to enlarge.) Although the space telescope is not in service yet, and is still undergoing instrument checkout and calibration, astronomers siezed the moment and used the newly installed Wide Field Camera 3 to take a close look at the rapidly changing dark spot in the Jovian atmosphere.

Did something just whack Jupiter?

Advanced amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley photographed the feature from his observatory in Murrumbateman, Australia on 19 July - a black smudge in Jupiter's clouds near its south polar region (image is inverted) similar to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts of 1994.

More here: details and observational updates.

UPDATE: Confirmed by NASA/JPL astronomers using the Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii; image shown below:
And here's a good, comprehensive article about the discovery.