A Hellacious Two Weeks on Jupiter's Moon Io

[Rick]

A Hellacious Two Weeks on Jupiter's Moon Io

Three massive volcanic eruptions occurred on Jupiter's moon Io within a two-week period in August of last year. This led astronomers to speculate that such "outbursts," which can send material hundreds of miles above the surface, might be much more common than they thought.

"We typically expect one huge outburst every one or two years, and they're usually not this bright," said Imke de Pater, professor and chair of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of one of two papers describing the eruptions. "Here we had three extremely bright outbursts, which suggest that if we looked more frequently we might see many more of them on Io."

Io, the innermost of Jupiter's four large "Galilean" moons, is about 2,300 miles across (3,630 kilometers). Aside from Earth, it is the only known place in the solar system with volcanoes erupting extremely hot lava like that on Earth. Because of Io's low gravity, large eruptions produce an umbrella of debris that rises high into space.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-260

[MarkS]

Fascinating stuff.