This Planet-Jupiter-in-astronomy page and the entire website are excerpted from You and the Universe, a handmade, individualized fine art book on astrology, mythology and astronomy through which the recipient's complete astrological reading is woven.

One of 63 known satellites and its closest large moon crosses the face of Jupiter above. Revolving around Jupiter at about the same distance our own Moon is from us, Io cuts across Jupiter’s powerful magnetic lines of force and becomes an immense electric generator. Io discharges its 1.2 trillion watts (400,000 volts at 3 million amps) with lightning bolts into the atmosphere of the thunder god below. And as Jupiter rotates, its magnetic field tears away one ton of Io’s surface per second, ionizing it into a doughnut of intense radiation called a plasma torus.

Because it is so close, Jupiter pulls on the side of Io facing it far more than on Io’s other sides. This differential pull causes 330-foot tides in Io’s solid surface as it rotates! On Earth, tides average 5 to 20 feet in water, not 330 feet in solid ground! The tremendous heat generated by this tidal pumping liquefies much of Io’s subsurface crust, which then seeks any escape route to the surface to relieve the pressure. Thus Io’s surface constantly renews itself, filling in craters with molten lava, and spreading new floodplains of smooth liquid rock.