The third-largest moon of the planet Jupiter, 3 643 km in diameter, orbiting in 1.77 days at a distance of 422 000 km. It is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, covered by hundreds of vents that erupt sulphur (rather than lava), giving Io an orange-coloured surface. Io and Earth are the only two planetary bodies that are undergoing known high-temperature volcanism.
Data gathered by the spacecraft Galileo in 1996 indicated that Io has a large metallic core. The Galileo probe also detected a 10-megawatt beam of electrons flowing between Jupiter and Io.
In 1997, instruments aboard the spacecraft Galileo measured the temperature of Io's volcanoes and detected a minimum temperature of 1 800 K/1 500 °C (in comparison, Earth's hottest volcanoes only reach about 1 600 K/1 300°C).