Abstract
Recent measurements in the infra-red of the energy emitted by Io suggest that if the observed emission is due to tidal dissipation in Io, then one should observe a very large secular acceleration of Io in its orbit. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the observational evidence which might be examined to verify that hypothesis. We have assembled the largest collection of eclipse observations extant and investigate the possibility of observing secular drifts in the period of Io. Analysis of eclipse observations requires the knowledge of good tables of ΔT and we explore the implications of the standard lunar acceleration of Spencer-Jones ṅMoon = −22.44 arcsec/cy2 versus that of Morrison and Ward ṅMoon = −26.0 arcsec/cy2. Preliminary results suggest that large tidal accelerations of Jupiter's satellites do not exist at the suggested magnitude and hence the heat flux measurements probably represent an episodic occurrence.
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