A Little Bit Odd

Some of the Solar system's volcanoes can appear a little extreme. This is Tvashtar volcano on Io. For reference, Io is about the size of our own Moon. In the picture, we can see a volcano spewing eruptive matter over 300 km above the surface. Earth Volcanoes can push a plume to maybe 40km with an exceptional eruption. If our Moon could do that, it would make the night sky a bit more interesting. Part of Tvashtar's height is due to the relatively low gravity of Io: about 1.8 m s-2.

Io's volcanoes also tend to have a much higher concentration of sulfur than those on Earth. However at least one volcano here has an extremely high sulfur content, resulting in some unusual visuals; sulfur lava is blue.

This is the Kawah Ijen volcano of Indonesia, photographed by Olivier Grunwald. During the day, the lava looks like a muddy, faintly red river. Liquid sulfur has a very low viscosity, so sulfur rich magmas tend to flow much like water.