This is a time lapse clip of Mount Erebus. We did not take this video but we thought you all might be interested. Mt. Erebus is 25 miles away from McMurdo Station (where this video was taken) on Ross Island and is the most Southerly active volcano in the world and 12,448 feet tall. It has one of only five volcanic open lava lakes on Earth. It is also one of only two places in the world that you can find projectile "bombs" that are formed in the magma and ejected from the volcano and when it meets the extreme cold of the surrounding air, they contract and inside the lava bomb is a crystal. They call these Erebus Crystals and we have some from friends that were doing scientific research on Erebus. The other place to find such crystals is Mt. Kenya. The scientists doing research have set up cameras to film the volcanic activity in the lava lake. The only cameras they found strong enough to resist the heat and possible projectiles are riot cameras used in prisons. The first successful summit of Erebus was by Shackleton in 1908. Erebus along with Mt. Terror, an extinct volcano in the same range, are named after Sir James Clark Ross' ships who discovered this area of Antarctica in 1841.
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| Mt. Erebus cone, no we did not take this picture! |
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