Moon Io

May 22, 2014

MOON IO

Orbiting the enormous planet Jupiter is the captivating moon called Io, one of four moons discovered by Galileo in 1610. One look at Io and it is noticeable that something unusual is going on there. Its spotted surface is a random collection of colors yellow, orange, red, and blackish brown, which makes it look like a pizza. The explanation for these remarkable colors that reflect off the surface would be because of volcanoes. Io is bursting with volcanic activity. Volcanoes spew out enormous amounts of sulfurous material that cover Io's landscape. Io's surface reflects the visible light that sulfur reflexes at different temperatures, and the colors vary with heat.

What somebody may find interesting about Io is the tidal heating. It is a force accountable for powering the volcanoes on Io. On Earth, the volcanic activity comes from energy released from the decay of radioactive debris within the core, and from heat left over when Earth was forming. However, Io is too small to have accretion heat, and could not produce the tremendous energy necessary to power all of the volcano activities that exist on the moon. That is why tidal heating plays a big part of the moons landscape architecture, always moving the crust and suing lava out onto the surface on the moon. If Io were the only moon, it would not be undergoing internal stresses; however, there are other moons in proximity that exert a gravitational pull as well. These gravitational pulls from other moons help Jupiter move Io's crust about 300 feet back and forth, This generates an enormous amount of energy to create molten lava, which makes it though the crust as an eruption of gasses and molten material.

Jupiter's moon Io is the most active moon in the solar system, with all the volcanoes that constantly erupt. Volcanic process that generates deep within its interior has sculpted most of its surface. The Voyager spacecraft first spotted Io's volcanic activity in 1979.The...