Three massive volcanic eruptions occurred on Jupiter's moon Io during a two week period last August, according to NASA.
Io is considered the most geologically active object in the solar system with over 400 active volcanoes.
The bright eruptions followed each other closely, surprising scientists who thought they would only see one outburst every year or two, according to a NASA release.
Io's extreme geologic activity can be blamed on tidal heating caused by friction generated within the moon's interior as it pulled between Jupiter and the planet's other moons, like Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede, according to researchers.
The discovery led astronomers to speculate that such explosions, which can eject material "several hundreds of miles above the satellite's surface,' could be more common than previously believed, according to the release.
"Here we had three extremely bright outbursts, which suggest that if we looked more frequently we might see many more of them on Io," Imke de Pater, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the lead author of one of two papers describing the eruptions, said in a statement.
Io is the innermost of Jupiter's four moons, with a diameter of approximately 2,300 miles. It is the fourth-largest moon in the solar system as well, according to NASA. It is the only currently known place in the solar system, other than Earth, with volcanoes erupting hot lava.
Due to Io's low gravity, large eruptions throw volcanic material high into space, creating an umbrella of debris, according to NASA.
The first two eruptions were discovered by de Pater on Aug. 15, 2013 in Io's southern hemisphere. The brighter one produced a 50-square-mile lava flow while the second eruption produced flows covering 120 square miles.
The third, and largest eruption, discovered on Aug. 29, was one of the brightest ever seen on Io.
Further analysis allowed the astronomers to determine that the temperature of the eruption was probably higher than normal eruption temperatures recorded on Earth.
The high temperature is "indicative of a composition of the magma that on Earth only occurred in our planet's formative years," de Pater said.
Astronomers also created models to predict the volume of magma spewed during an eruption, which could help them "understand the processes that helped shape the surfaces of all the terrestrial planets, including Earth, and the moon," according to NASA.
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