Io’s Grand Finale Ends with a Boom—Jupiter’s Fifth Moon Bursts

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Changing the volatile surface of Jupiter's "Pizza Moon" named lo, scientists say that the volcanic eruptions documented last Aug. 29, 2013 by the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and Chile, were the "grand finale" to a series of powerful volcanic eruptions that set records as the brightest in the entire solar system.

A new study published in the August edition of Icarus Journal states that lo's, the most volcanically active body in our solar system, newest bout of eruptions and catastrophic plumes were a result of "tidal heating" on the interior of the moon. As the lava churns inside of lo, friction much like that of our tectonic plates, builds until an eruption alleviates the pressure.

(Photo : NASA Galileo Spacecraft)

"Tidal pumping generates a tremendous amount of heat within Io, keeping much of its subsurface crust in liquid form seeking any available escape route to the surface to relieve the pressure" experts at NASA say in their overview of the volatile celestial body. "Thus, the surface of Io is constantly renewing itself, filling in any impact craters with molten lava lakes and spreading smooth new floodplains of liquid rock."

And although lo is known to have record-breaking eruptions, none were expected to be this bright. With a surface compiled of nearly 400 volcanoes, with an estimated 150 active sites, lo may only have a fraction of the estimated active volcanoes here on Earth, but their activity is much more noteworthy.

(Photo : NASA Galileo Spacecraft)

"We typically expect one huge outburst every one or two years, and they're usually not this bright," Imke de Pater, lead author and professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley, says. "here we had three extremely bright outburst, which suggest that if we look more frequently we might see many more of them on Io."

Looking to expand our knowledge of the active generation of more land, a dwindling commodity here on Earth, international observatories have already begun discussing expansion of monitoring in the lo region of space.