August 5, 2014

Image of Io taken by the North telescope of the Gemini Observatory that shows the vulcanic activity in August 2013 (Image Katherine de Kleer/UC Berkeley/Gemini Observatory)

Io, the innermost of the Jupiter’s large satellites called the Galilean moons because they were discovered by Galileo Galilei, is the object with the greatest geological activity in the solar system with over 400 active volcanoes. Now new images of Io have been published from almost exactly a year ago, when there were two weeks of activity intense even by the standards of Io, with three massive eruptions.