Going with the flowMOUNT KILAUEA, HAWAII
USANow this really is a hot shot, the gently glowing lava flows of Mount Kilauea volcano, Hawaii, are capped by the faint streak of a shooting star, the sprawling majesty of the Milky Way and a gleaming full Moon.
“What’s special about the volcanoes
of Hawaii is that they sit on a giant hotspot, which is the origin of the very islands themselves,” says
Prof Dougal Jerram, a volcano expert and BBC presenter. “A hot plume
of material from deep within the Earth feeds the volcano, and as the Pacific plate slowly moves over this hot spot you get the chain of Islands that form the Hawaiian archipelago.”Mount Kilauea is the most active
volcano on Earth – its current eruption has lasted for more than 30 years.
Its gently sloping landscape means
that the incandescent lobes of lava that it produces are slow-moving but expansive.“Each lobe breaks out from a previous
one and flows like hot treacle, making a characteristic folded, rope-like texture on the surface, which is named by an Hawaiian word ‘pahoehoe’,”
says Jerram.