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

Arijit Manna, Sabyasachi Pal

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 (CH3COCH3), one single emission line of disulfur monoxide (S2O), and a rotational absorptional line of CO at frequency ν = 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 ≥5σ 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 CH3COCH3, S2O, and CO are mainly coming from volcanic plumes. The statistical column density of CH3COCH3 line is N(CH3COCH3) = 6.92×1016 cm−2 but for the cases of S2O and CO, the column densities are N(S2O) = 2.63×1016 cm−2 and N(CO) = 5.27×1015 cm−2 respectively. The carbon monoxide gas is mainly formed by the photolysis of the volcanic gas acetone.

Comments: 8 pages, 1 figure, comments are welcome

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)

Cite as: arXiv:2103.17018 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2103.17018v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)

Submission history

From: Sabyasachi Pal Dr. 

[v1] Wed, 31 Mar 2021 12:06:36 UTC (403 KB)

https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.17018

Astrochemistry, Astrobiology