![]() An eruption on Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, as seen by the Galileo spacecraft. Read our interview with Linda Morabito, the NASA scientist who discovered volcanoes on Io. This perpetual bending and flexing generates intense tidal heating in the interior of the moon, melting its silicate rock crust into hot magma. The powerful gravitational pull of Jupiter tugging on Io constantly distorts its shape. The driving force behind all this activity is tidal heating. Our Moon is a cold, dead world, while Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System – even more so than Earth – and is constantly spewing itself inside out with intense eruptions. The moon Io, the innermost of Jupiter's Galilean moons, is a violent, tortured little world.ĭespite being almost the same size as our own Moon, the two couldn’t be more different. įurther observations have been made by Cassini–Huygens in 2000, New Horizons in 2007, and Juno since 2017, as well as from Earth-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope.Jupiter's volcanic moon Io probably has a subsurface magma ocean Io receives about 3,600 rem (36 Sv) of ionizing radiation per day. ![]() These spacecraft also revealed the relationship between Io and Jupiter's magnetosphere and the existence of a belt of high-energy radiation centered on Io's orbit. The Galileo spacecraft performed several close flybys in the 1990s and early 2000s, obtaining data about Io's interior structure and surface composition. In 1979, the two Voyager spacecraft revealed Io to be a geologically active world, with numerous volcanic features, large mountains, and a young surface with no obvious impact craters. Viewed from Earth, Io remained just a point of light until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it became possible to resolve its large-scale surface features, such as the dark red, polar and bright equatorial regions. Io played a significant role in the development of astronomy in the 17th and 18th centuries discovered in January 1610 by Galileo Galilei, along with the other Galilean satellites, this discovery furthered the adoption of the Copernican model of the Solar System, the development of Kepler's laws of motion, and the first measurement of the speed of light. Io's volcanic ejecta also produced a large plasma torus around Jupiter. The materials produced by this volcanism make up Io's thin, patchy atmosphere and Jupiter's extensive magnetosphere. Numerous extensive lava flows, several more than 500 km (300 mi) in length, also mark the surface. Its volcanic plumes and lava flows produce large surface changes and paint the surface in various subtle shades of yellow, red, white, black, and green, largely due to allotropes and compounds of sulfur. Io's volcanism is responsible for many of its unique features. ![]() Most of Io's surface is composed of extensive plains with a frosty coating of sulfur and sulfur dioxide. Unlike most moons in the outer Solar System, which are mostly composed of water ice, Io is primarily composed of silicate rock surrounding a molten iron or iron sulfide core. Some of these peaks are taller than Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth's surface. Io's surface is also dotted with more than 100 mountains that have been uplifted by extensive compression at the base of Io's silicate crust. Several volcanoes produce plumes of sulfur and sulfur dioxide that climb as high as 500 km (300 mi) above the surface. This extreme geologic activity is the result of tidal heating from friction generated within Io's interior as it is pulled between Jupiter and the other Galilean moons- Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. With over 400 active volcanoes, Io is the most geologically active object in the Solar System.
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