Io — Most Volcanically Active (Moon of Jupiter)

Description:

Io has often been described as looking like a pizza covered with melted cheese, tomato sauce and olives. The reason for this distinct surface is its vast number of active volcanoes. There are hundreds of volcanoes scattered over the surface of the moon, which is a bit larger than Earth’s Moon. Many of the volcanoes are still active and Voyager 1 and 2 were able to capture pictures of erupting volcanoes with plumes as tall as 190 miles.

Io with Volcanoes(1 mb)

The path of Io around Jupiter is highly elliptical causing the tidal forces exerted on the moon to be immense. The effect of this is that the solid body of the moon can bulge out to almost 330 feet. This movement makes the moon incredibly hot, keeping the subsurface crust in a liquid state. This liquid sub-layer is one of the reasons for the high volcanic activity. One result of the volcanic activity is that there are very few crater marks as new lava is constantly filling in any craters that are created. Because of this, Io has a very young surface. There are two datasets available for Io. The first shows the surface of the moon. The second starts with the surface of Io, then highlights the locations of 26 major volcanoes on Io and finally shows the surface again.

Notable Features: Io

Extraordinary number of volcanoes
Lack of craters
" Pizza—like" appearance

Notable Features: Io Volcanoes

Volcanoes labeled with letters

Data Category

Major: Astronomy
Minor: Jupiter

Keywords:

Solar System, moon, volcano

Data Set Name	io/original
Data Set Source	Voyager and Galileo Image details
Data Set Developer	Planetary Image Research Laboratory Laika's Celestia Add-Ons
Visualization Developer	Steve Albers, NOAA/GSD
Audio	No
Download	FTP

Data Set Name	io/volcanoes
Data Set Source	Magic Planet
Data Set Developer	Magic Planet
Visualization Developer	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Audio	No
Contact	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Download	FTP