WASHINGTON New images of Jupiter's moon Io, taken by NASA's Galileo probes, reveal more than 100 volcanic peaks and basins -- some of which are deeper than the Grand Canyon -- with lava hotter than any found on Earth.

The images, taken February 22 and released Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Washington, D.C. came from Galileo's closest pass ever of Io. The pictures are the sharpest yet.

From Galileo's vantage point, a scant 124 miles (200 kilometers) above the surface, the probe could discern features as small as a house.

Scientists also were able to estimate that Io -- about the size of our moon -- could have up to 300 active volcanoes on its surface.

Among the more impressive images were those of Chaac Patera, a 1.7-mile- (2.7-kilometer-) deep volcanic crater named for the Mayan god of rain. Its slope is 70 degrees, steeper than the mile- (1.6-kilometer-) deep Grand Canyon, which slopes only about 30 degrees.

"If we ever start a tourism industry on Io, standing on the rim [of Chaac] would be extremely impressive," said Alfred McEwen, a research scientist at the University of Arizona.

Galileo also took new pictures of a strange volcanic region called Tvashtar Catena, which was seen to be erupting last fall.

The images show that Tvashtar's mile-high volcanic plume -- gasses and lava -- has shifted directions and its temperature has reached almost 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,038 degrees Celsius). That's hotter than any eruption on Earth.

Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Until Galileo, scientists were aware of only about 20 volcanic regions, fleetingly photographed during the two Voyager-probe flybys two decades ago.

With the new data, scientists now have confirmed the existence of 80 active volcanoes and suspect Io is riddled with at least 200 more.

The February 22 flyby "was completely successful," said John Spencer of the Lowell Observatory. "All the data that were planned were actually taken," he said, noting that it was the first flyby from Galileo in which all the targeted objectives were met.

The $1.4 billion Galileo spacecraft was launched from Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1989 to study Jupiter and its moons, arriving at the giant planet in 1995. Since 1997, Galileo has been on an extended mission to study the jovian moons.