Super Volcanoes Spotted on Jupiter's Moon Io

Last August was a rough month for Jupiter's moon Io. The satellite was rocked by three massive volcanoes within a two-week period.

NASA astronomers were surprised by the high volcanic activity as these eruptions are considered to be infrequent - occurring around once every one or two years. Previously, the researchers had documented just 13 giant eruptions between 1978 and 2006, space.com reported.

The latest data on the volcanic activity shows that the Io might be frequently disturbed by mega-eruptions than previously considered.

The most powerful eruption in the latest trio was one that occurred on August 29, 2013. It released a "curtain of fire" as several-miles long fissures spewed lava into space, researchers said. Two of the three eruptions took place August 15, 2013.

The research papers on the event are published in the journal Icarus.

The moon is around 2,300 miles across (3,630 kilometers) and one of Jupiter's four large, Galilean moons. The other satellites of Jupiter are Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

What makes volcanic activity on Io special is that apart from Earth, it is the only known place in the Solar system where extremely hot lava erupts from volcanoes. Also, Io has low gravity, meaning that the lava and debris form an umbrella-like structure that rise high into space.

The researchers said that the three recent volcanoes spewed large amount of debris.

"These new events are in a relatively rare class of eruptions on Io because of their size and astonishingly high thermal emission," Ashley Davies, a volcanologist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a news release. "The amount of energy being emitted by these eruptions implies lava fountains gushing out of fissures at a very large volume per second, forming lava flows that quickly spread over the surface of Io."

The latest observations don't just help scientists better understand Io, but also help them find how volcanic activity shaped other planets in the solar system such as Earth and Venus, Space.com reported.