This then makes its way back along Jupiter's magnetic field lines and causes lighting storms in Jupiter's upper atmosphere.Ī composite image of auroras on Jupiter, taken using the Hubble Space Telescope's Imaging Spectrograph. According to NASA, Io can develop 400,000 volts across itself, in turn creating 3 million amperes of electrical current. Io's orbit cuts across Jupiter's powerful magnetic lines of force, turning Io into an electric generator. Jupiter's moon Io may be small (roughly the size of Earth's moon) compared to the planet (more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside Jupiter), but the moon still has a mighty impact on its parent planet. Io's sulfur dioxide atmosphere is extremely thin - about one billionth the surface pressure of Earth's atmosphere, according to ESA. Patches of sulfur dioxide frost have also been spotted on the surface, along with hundreds of volcanoes. Io's surface is primarily composed of sulfur and sulfur dioxide, according to ESA. Io cannot escape this perpetual game of gravitational tug-of-war and subsequent planetary heating. If Io were Jupiter's only moon, its orbit would have likely "settled down" into a circle a long time ago, but the ongoing, constant outward tug from Io's outer neighbors Europa and Ganymede ensure that does not happen. This movement causes Io's rocks to grind past each other, generating vast quantities of heat - 20 times more heat flow than Earth. This gravitation fluctuation creates a perpetual push and pull on the moon's interior in different directions, which causes Io's surface to bulge by as much as 330 feet (100 meters), according to NASA. But at its maximum distance, it can be as far away as 601 million miles (968 million km).Īs Io orbits Jupiter in an elliptical fashion, the strength of Jupiter's gravity on Io varies depending on how close the moon is to the gas giant.
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