High Resolution Imaging of Io's Volcanoes with LBTI

The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), located on Mount Graham in eastern Arizona, employs two 8.4 meter mirrors with a 14.4 center-to-center separation on a common mount. Coherent combination of these two AO-corrected apertures via the LBT Interferometer (LBTI) produces Fizeau interferometric images with spatial resolution consistent with the diffraction limit of the 22.8-meter aperture. In particular LBTI resolves thermal signatures (i.e., features observed at M-band) on the surface of Io down to ~150 kilometers; a two-fold improvement over what has previously been possible from the ground. We show images collected with LBTI on December 24, 2013, in which Loki's shape is clearly resolved and at least fourteen additional volcanic hot spots are detected.We analyze three locations in the LBTI data: emission features within Loki Patera, the area near Rarog and Heno Patarae, and a hot spot seen in the Colchis Regio.For Loki Patera, we interpret spatially resolved variation in the emission within that region. With M-band resolution that is comparable to what has previously been achievable only at K-band, we compare localized emission features with what has been seen in earlier observations at shorter wavelengths.Thermal emission from activity at Rarog and Heno Patarae is well resolved in these images, while a third hot-spot in the nearby Lerna Regio is also clearly resolved. This area is of special interest since it was the site of two high-effusion outbursts on August 15th, 2013 [de Pater et al. (2014) Icarus].Lastly, we explore a hot-spot seen in the Colchis Regio that may be a remnant of a violent outburst detected on August 29th, 2013 [de Kleer et al. (2014) Icarus]