Sheepy Dalek on a Saturday

Tolbachik is still going strong:
More information: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=80473

A screenshot I took 2 days ago:

Best info provided on the KVERT site

Etna showed 4 paroxysms but once Greg set his scripts on it, it stopped. Voodoo going on. (j.k)

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Report on a Deep Space Live:

The museum is also called “Museum of the Future”, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, hosts a special “Deep Space Live” show every Thursday evening at 8pm.
The topics varies. Sometimes experts explain astronomical themes, sometimes Red Bull presents extreme sport events, sometimes paintings are explained and sometimes something totally different is on.

The Deep Space is a room with 2 screens (on the wall and on the floor) provided by 8 very special projectors each able to handle at least double HD quality images. People are even sitting “inside” of the floor projection or may walk around in it. On the 7th of february the topic of that DS-Live was “Feuerberge – Vulkane aus der Nähe” (translation: Mountains of Fire, volcanoes close-up”) with the Austrian photographer Christoph Kaltseis presenting his images.

I was very much looking forward to this, I do not think I need to explain to you why.
The image shows the start of the  “talk” in the “Deep Space” theatre in the Ars Electronica Center in Linz Austria.

I hesitated to write a report about this show because I was not all to happy with it. The pictures were good, some were spectacular. But the talk going along with the images lacked substance and had quite a lot of incorrect information. It was mostly a slideshow of images and a story more like travel journalism, than a talk on volcanoes which I had been hoping for. This is OK, I just had wrong expectations.

The speaker had discovered his interest in volcanoes when he was visiting the Arenal in Costa Rica without realizing beforehand that he was visiting a volcano. Then there were some nice images of volcanoes of Costa Rica and some on Yellowstone.

Then it went on to the Italian volcanoes Vesuvius and Stromboli with some nice images of “Stromboli” the village nestled into the coastline of the volcano. Then some spectacular photos from a nightly eruption of Stromboli, leaving traces in the image like fireworks.

I took all the images standing on the balcony in “Deep Space” in the AEC with my mobile phone, so the quality is by far not the same as the one provided for the audience in the “Deep Space”.

Then he moved on to Vulcano, the Italian Island. May I please add for anyone who was present at the show, that a volcano showing intense fumarolic activity is NOT extinct! And that there are more volcanoes in Europe than the Italian and Icelandic ones. And that especially Middle Europe is not totally dead in the volcanic sense. Here i d like to mention the excellent posts by El Nathan and chryphia about the Eifel Volcanic Field. http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/region.cfm?rnum=01&rpage=list

The photographer had been visiting the erupting Kilauea using a helicopter and showed great images of rope lava, an open lava tube and the ocean entry.

Again: May I please add that Mauna Kea IS the highest mountain on earth if you consider how high it rises from the surrounding surface on the earth. But it is not 17 km high! The ocean around Hawaii is 6 km deep and Mauna Kea rises up to 4200 m. So it rises 10 km not 17 km.

Here is an image of Ol Doinyo Lengai when it still had its hornitos on top. Those got blown of in an eruption 2007 and now you can not walk as easily on top of the crater anymore as it lies 150 deeper. (Wikipedia link.)

The Danakil Desert. The speech on how how difficult it is to access these volcanos was interesting. Then we heard a description of the hike up to Erta Ale. The people there sure look dangerous and the “hotel-rooms” which are rented in advance of the hike to the volcano, look more like a dogshed and don’t really make one feel like being in a safe place.

And then came the most spectacular thing about the whole talk. A long video showing the boiling lava in the mouth of Erta Ale.

Simply beautiful to see a volcano in action. I added GVP and Wikipedia links with basic information on the volcanoes, in case someone who was in the audience, would like some facts.

Spica