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Emissions of light (at wavelengths of 595 to 645 nanometers) likely arise from a tenuous atmosphere of oxygen. These glows would appear red to the eye and are consequently colored red in the movie.

Io is also brutally hot, has lots of tectonic activity, and hot and cold running Sulphur Volcanoes.

Still, there is this little tidbit from Solarviews:

The temperature on Io's surface is about -143 C (-230 F); however, a large hot spot associated with a volcanic feature measured about 17 C (60 F). Scientists believe the hot spot may be a lava lake, although the temperature indicates the surface is not molten. This feature is reminiscent of lava lakes on Earth.

My imagination can't help but be stirred by the idea of an open air Ionian resort hotel with swimming pools heated by molten Sulphur and with a dramatic view of Jupiter in the background.

*sigh*... The problems with this is that IO apparently has very little radiation shielding in comparison to earth. Sure you could land there... maybe even walk around, but if you took off your radiation shielding or went outside the sheilded dome, you'd get a fatal tan almost instantly, I think.

Also, while there is an atmospehre, IO is not much more massive than the Earth's moon. Even if it does have oxygen, you'd have to compress and mix it with something other than vaporized sulphur before humans could breath it.

Still, what an idea...

Depends, are kids just a subset of adults? :)

Some moons are fairly boring chunks of rock (like, say, The Moon), others tell a story of an extremely violent past (like, they've been blasted to bits and only just managed to stay as one entity, like Miranda).

Others have thick atmospheres containing weird-ass chemicals (like Titan), others have vulcanism driven by processes we barely understand (like Triton, or Io)

Some may have oceans, others are small chunks of rock we would barely notice if they weren't orbiting some other body (like Phobos).

The planets may be more interesting in some respects, but there are a lot more moons to look at :)

Depends, are kids just a subset of adults? :)

Some moons are fairly boring chunks of rock (like, say, The Moon), others tell a story of an extremely violent past (like, they've been blasted to bits and only just managed to stay as one entity, like Miranda).

Others have thick atmospheres containing weird-ass chemicals (like Titan), others have vulcanism driven by processes we barely understand (like Triton, or Io)

Some may have oceans, others are small chunks of rock we would barely notice if they weren't orbiting some other body (like Phobos).

The planets may be more interesting in some respects, but there are a lot more moons to look at :)

I sure hope they don't find one of these on the dark side.

Read more about the great Apollo adventure of the 1960s and 1970s!

of large stellar objects 50 billon lightyears away

This is one of these things where you cannot exagerate TOO much, because the estimated age of the universe is in the range 12-15 billion years.

I was told that the telescope could clearly identify a car, allowing you to determine the model and year if it were floating in the asteroid belt.

When Hubble looked at Asteroid Vesta, it had a resolution of about 5km/pixel. So you're basically claiming your telescope has 100,000x more resolution than Hubble? Come on.

I interned at the Subaru telescope,

And it looks like the astronomers there had a lot of fun with you.

Kinda reminds me of my first astronomy class. I hadn't even made it to my freshman year of high school and I had 4 credits of Astronomy from the local community college.

Many people have given good advice above. I'll mainly just second their comments. The order I'd proceed in is.

First item, a good beginners star atlas.

Second item, warm clothing.

Third item, many nights in the country just learning the stars and constelations.

After that go and get a good pair of binoculars or a good telescope.

Last, but not least. As your doughter is so young, you will need to be there as a source of infromation. You'll need to learn alot to help guide her in the early years.

Now for some Links. The first two have good beginners information. Some of the links below may be dead. I just quick cut and pasted them from the astronomy section of my Interesting Places page.

• Astronomy Mag. (www.astronomy.com/home.asp).
• Sky & Telescope Mag. (www.skypub.com).
• Minnesota Astronomical Society (MAS) (www.mnastro.org).
• The Telescope Shoppe (www.telescopeshop.com), 3402 Federal Dr., Eagan, MN, 651-688-7335. Yes this is a local Twin Cities telescope shop. They have a map on their site showing where they are. They are tucked in the lower level along the side of the strip mall they are in. The store is small and easy to miss. If your at the corner of Yankee Doodle RD and Federal Dr., park in the lot to the south east. They are a short stones throw from the intersection.
• Telescope making links
• • Many good links on making AltAz mounts (zebu.uoregon.edu/~mbartels/altaz/altaz.html).
  • ATM's resource List (www.freenet.tlh.fl.us/~blombard).
• Astronomy-Mall.com (www.astronomy-mall.com/Astronomy-Mall).
• Stellafane (www.stellafane.com).
• Terrestrial Planet Finder (tpf.jpl.nasa.gov).
• Many Images of the moon (www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/pxmoon.html) .
• Solar Views (www.solarviews.com).
• Planetary Image Atlas (www-pdsimage.JPL.NASA.GOV/PDS/public/Atlas).
• Hubble Space Telescope Archive (oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html).
• Hummble Site (hubble.stsci.edu).
• StarStuff (www.starstuff.org).
• SpaceRef (www.spaceref.com), Your space refference.
• Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive (antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html).
• SkyView (skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) virtual observatory.
• 2MASS (www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/) and (pegasus.astro.umass.edu/GradProg/2mass.html) Two Micron All Sky Survey.
• Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment (LASCO) (http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/lasco.html).
• AAVSO Network to Search for Optical Counterparts of Gamma-Ray Bursts (www.aavso.org/grb.stm).
• High Altitude Observatory (www.hao.ucar.edu).
• Asteroid Comet Impact Hazards (impact.arc.nasa.gov).
• • Unusual Minor Planets (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/Unusual.html).
  • Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/PHACloseApp.html).& nbsp; Of particular interest to me are LB16 and AN10 which will pass at a distance closer than the moon's orbit. LB16 currently only has one opposition charted so it's predicted orbit will likely change as new data comes in. It's expected to swing by in 2004. In 2027 AN10 will visit earth. It's orbit is calculated with three oppositions meaning it't much more likely to really showup ontime and in place. With further data LB16 could either get closer or farther away. When AN10's orbit was first predicted (only one opposition at the time) it's error envelope included earth. With further data it was found to just pass within the moon's orbit and miss the earth.
  • Forthcoming Close Approaches To The Earth (cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/lists/CloseApp.html).&nbs p; This is the document to look at when you want to know who will visit next and how far away. It has all close approaches to 0.2 AU away from earth or within 20% of the distance of between the sun and earth. On Sep 19th, 2000 we will have a visiter at 0.0477 AU and on Oct 31st anotehr one will pass at 0.07386 AU. LB16 and AN10 are expected to pass at around 0.25% of the distance between the sun and earth.
• Mars Global Surveyor (mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html).
• Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) (ltpwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/tharsis/mola.html). There are full data on the shape of Mars including 1 degree and .5 degree elevation data sets.
• Planetary photojournal by JPL (photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov).
• NASA's Origins Program (origins.jpl.nasa.gov).

The Soviet Union sent several probes to Venus, and in 1975 they even got photographs from the surface.

Check these out:

Hubble Space Telescope Images of Titan's Surface
Other Titan Info/Statistics

nf

He went on and on about phase angles, etc., claiming that NASA deliberately avoided taking any picture under the exact same circumstances (but managing to avoid talking about the number of dust storms that would've taken place in the interim) so as to prevent people from really seeing what was there.

It was especially clear to me that even if there WERE new pictures at exactly the same phase, etc. it wouldn't satisfy any of the believers.

I wonder though if we can get stats on which images are requested the most. I'll bet that the Face on Mars location is ranked up there with Olympus Mons, and Valles Marineris

He went on and on about phase angles, etc., claiming that NASA deliberately avoided taking any picture under the exact same circumstances (but managing to avoid talking about the number of dust storms that would've taken place in the interim) so as to prevent people from really seeing what was there.

It was especially clear to me that even if there WERE new pictures at exactly the same phase, etc. it wouldn't satisfy any of the believers.

I wonder though if we can get stats on which images are requested the most. I'll bet that the Face on Mars location is ranked up there with Olympus Mons, and Valles Marineris