3rd Quarter Project

For this quarter, my project is about Io. Io is the closest major moon to Jupiter. It is a bit bigger than the Earth's moon, and just like our moon, one side always faces the planet. In my project, I will be talking about the composition and structure of the planet, as well as other basic facts about it, such as mass and volume, but compared to our moon, as just listing large numbers doesn't have any type of scale to it for reference. After this, I am going to show how these characteristics give Io some phenomenons that make the moon incredibly unique.

For example, Io is incredibly volcanic and has a constantly moving crust because of gravity creating tides out of the rock, partly because of its position and composition, and it constantly recycles its surface. The moon also produces an electrical field because it cuts through Jupiter's magnetic field, producing thousands of volts of electricity which creates lightning in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. Also because of this magnetic field, sediment from Io is stripped off, creating a sphere of radiation called a plasma torus.

Less importantly, I'm also going to talk about how Io was discovered by Galileo and how it's name got changed from a number to a Greek mythology story, and what the story was.


Here is a picture of Io, showing it's unique look because of it's composition.