Atmospheres under fire: The effects of volcanic and impact induced plumes on the atmospheres of Io and Jupiter, respectively

"Atmospheres Under Fire: The Effects of Volcanic and Impact Induced Plumes on The Atmospheres of Io and Jupiter, Respectively" provides a detailed description of the by-products derived from these two common Solar System events. Both direct volcanic venting of SO, SO2, S2 gas, and the subsequent freezing and sublimation of the volcanic SO2 output leads to localized Ionian atmospheres. Additionally, transport from either of these localized sources may contribute to the existence of a tenuous extended Ionian atmosphere. Analysis of consecutive disk-integrated near-ultra violet spectra of Io obtained in 1994 and 1996 indicates that Io's atmosphere is characterized by temporally varying localized and global distributions of SO and SO2 gases. These data provide the first measurement of the temporal variability of Io's atmosphere with respect to Io's location relative to the impinging, self-generated plasma torus. They also provide the first measurement of changes in Io's atmosphere within the two hour time period immediately following eclipse egress indicating that SO gas was depleted during eclipse conditions, and that the extended SO and SO2 gas components increased and decreased, respectively. I also present constraints of the SO, SO2, and S2 gas properties over the Pele volcano derived from spatially and spectrally resolved observations of the Pele plume and its deposit region.;The collision of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragments with Jupiter represents an equally intriguing, fundamental Solar System phenomenon. This collision resulted in impact-induced plumes that rose to elevations ∼1200 km above the 1 bar level of the Jovian atmosphere, and re-entered the collisional region of the Jovian atmosphere ∼20 minutes subsequent to the initial fragment impacts producing ejecta patterns extending ∼60--12,000 km across the Jovian cloud tops. Based on a detailed ballistic analysis of Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 images of the impact phenomena resulting from the collision of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragments A, E, G and W with Jupiter, I present an accurate definition of the velocities of the impact-induced ejecta. From these results the energy of the impacts and the potential effect of these kinds of collision events within the Solar System can be assessed.