Io: Moon over Jupiter
Product Description
PIA02879
- How
big is Jupiter's moon Io?
The most volcanic body
in the Solar System,
Io (usually pronounced "EYE-oh") is
3,600 kilometers in diameter, about the size of
planet Earth's single large
natural
satellite.
Gliding
past
Jupiter
at the turn of the millennium, the Cassini spacecraft captured this
awe
inspiring view of active
Io
with the
largest
gas giant as a backdrop,
offering a stunning demonstration of the ruling planet's
relative
size.
Although in
the above picture Io appears
to be located just in front of the
swirling Jovian clouds,
Io
hurtles around its orbit once every 42 hours
at a distance of 420,000 kilometers or so from the center
of
Jupiter.
That puts Io
nearly 350,000 kilometers above
Jupiter's
cloud tops,
roughly equivalent to the distance between
Earth
and Moon.
The
Cassini
spacecraft itself was about 10
million kilometers
from Jupiter when recording the image data.
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA
Text: APOD 2012 April 8
