| has gloss | eng: Tupan Patera is an active volcano on Jupiters moon Io. It is located on Ios anti-Jupiter hemisphere at . Tupan consists of a volcanic crater, known as a patera, 79 kilometers across and 900 meters deep. The volcano was first seen in low-resolution observations by the two Voyager spacecraft in 1979, but volcanic activity was not seen at this volcano until June 1996 during the Galileo spacecraft's first orbit. Following this first detection of near-infrared thermal emission and subsequent detections by Galileo during the next few orbits, this volcano was formally named Tupan Patera, after the thunder god of the Tupí-Guaraní indigenous peoples in Brazil, by the International Astronomical Union in 1997. Galileo acquired high-resolution color images and near-infrared spectra of Tupan Patera during an encounter on October 16, 2001. This data revealed warm, dark silicate lava on the eastern and western sides of the patera floor with an "island" of bright, cool material in the middle. |
