Spoiler: the biggest ones aren’t on Earth.
Jupiter’s moon, Io, is the most geologically active body in the solar system. This image, taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2007, shows a 180-mile high plume rising above one of its volcanoes.
Hundreds of volcanoes erupt on the hellish landscape of this moon every day.
Future explorations could help us better understand how Jupiter’s gravity affects the heat buildup inside Io.
Not all volcanoes release hot lava. Some are cryovolcanoes that shoot out substances like water vapor and ice particles — like the ones on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.
This incredible shot of ice volcanoes shooting streams of ice and vapor from beneath the moon’s frozen surface was captured by NASA’s Cassini during a 2005 flyby.
In 2015, New Horizons captured a strange formation on Pluto that researchers suspect is an inactive cryovolcano.
Wright Mons is the informal name for the icy feature. It’s 2.5 miles tall, and if researchers can confirm that it is, in fact, a volcano, it would be the largest one found in the outer solar system.
NASA’s Voyager spacecraft captured black-and-white images of the icy lava flows on Triton in 1989.
The largest volcano in our solar system is Olympus Mons on Mars, which stands at about 16 miles tall.
Our sister planet is home to at least 1,600 major volcanoes, and some might still be active today. So far only inactive ones have been spotted, but upcoming missions will capture new views of Venus’ topography.
This is Maat Mons, the largest volcano on Venus found so far. The image was computer-generated by NASA’s Magellan Mission and released in 1992.
Earth’s moon has signs of once-active volcanoes that can be seen on its surface. This patch, informally called Ina, is the remains of volcanic activity on the Moon, and was first discovered during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971.
Since then, over 70 similar spots — called Irregular Mare Patches — have been located on the moon (indicated here in red). These hint at volcanic activity that likely ended within the last 100 million years.
Xinhua News Agency/Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images
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