Hawaii Volcanic eruption photos Are Out of This World
On 24 May 1969, a deep rumbling started within Kīlauea, the youngest of the volcanoes comprising the island of Hawaii.
Those were the first moments of the historical Maunaulu eruption – a spectacular outpouring of lava that lasted for a total of 1,774 days, at the time becoming the longest Kīlauea eruption in at least two millennia.
Staff at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory had noted that the magma reservoir underneath the tip of the volcano had started to swell, but they still didn’t expect the magnificent activity that lasted well into the summer of 1974.
So huge was this eruption that the cooling lava created a whole new landscape on the side of Kīlauea, earning the name of “growing mountain”, or Maunaulu.
In 1969 alone, twelve huge lava fountains erupted at the site, and much of this activity has been captured for posterity in glorious photographs.
In 2018, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reminded the world of the Maunaulu eruption with a throwback photo to one of the rarest types of a lava fountain you can possibly get (header image).
Usually, lava just explodes all over the place without any rhyme or reason, making this beautiful, perfectly rounded dome fountain all the more special. (By the way, the foreground is not the ocean, as it might seem at first glance – it’s a landscape of cooled lava.)
Here’s another version of the photo, taken on 11 October 1969. The original tweet notes its height at roughly 20 meters (65 feet), but according to USGS records, at some point the fountain may have towered as high as 75 meters (246 feet).
Lava fountains, in all their blazing glory of raw exploding geology, can reach the dizzying heights of 500 meters, according to USGS.
They typically happen when lava shoots out of an isolated vent or a fissure in the volcano, or when water in a confined space gets inside a lava tube.
And, if you like this photo, Maunaulu certainly produced more incredible scenery.
On June 25 of the same year, a massive 220-meter (722-foot) fountain of lava shot up from the volcano:
Image: USGS
On August 15 of 1969, there was this little splatter of boiling hot rock, just 8 meters (26 feet) high but shaped rather like a searing mushroom cloud. At that point in the eruption, activity like this was almost constantly happening at Maunaulu:
Image: USGS
One of the most spectacular events during the eruption were these 100-meter high ‘lava falls’ overflowing the ‘Alae Crater on Kīlauea, on 5 August 1969.
“For the two seasoned observers who witnessed this awe-inspiring event, nothing else matched it during the entire Maunaulu eruption,” USGS writes on their website.
Even after that stunning event, Kīlauea was far from done inspiring awe in its observers. Another massive lava fountain shot up in the air on October 20, and in this photo you can even see a geologist standing on a viewing platform about 800 meters (2,625 feet) away.
Despite the considerable distance, observers still had to hide behind a stone wall as the heat was so intense – sometimes dry grass right next to the platform would even catch fire.
Of course, Kīlauea hardly rests. Just nine years after Maunaulu ceased, in 1983 the Pu’u’ō’ō eruption began, producing regular spectacles of lava explosions. Far surpassing its predecessor, it lasted until 30 April 2018, when the crater floor and lava lake catastrophically collapsed.
What’s particularly wild is that’s not even the longest continually active volcano on our planet. According to Guinness World Records, this honor belongs to Mt Stromboli in Italy, that’s been going since at least the 7th century BCE.
You can see the full gallery of the picturesque Maunaulu eruption on the USGS website.
See more here: sciencealert.com
Header image: US Geologic Survey
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itsme
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blimey, that top one looks like a giant covid 19 rising up from the sea
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
I like challenges. So I was challenges by these photos. For first I considered that what I saw was not actually real. But because of Mt Saint Helens, we know (observe) that when the is an eruption, which blows the solid peak off of a solid volcanic mountain, there remains a molten lava surface at bottom the crater which remains after the very violent eruption..
I have to told by a mining engineer, Robert Beaty whom I believe, that what blows the solid peak off of the former volcanic mountain is a huge volume of pressurized carbon dioxide which has been formed by the heat of the molten lava which decomposes. limestone calcium carbonate to calcium oxide plus carbon dioxide.
I am sure some have seen a photo taken with a very, very short exposure time of what occurs when a drop of water is dropped onto (into) the surface of liquid water.
And I am sure many of you have blown up a balloon and therefore experienced that it is very difficult to begin to ‘stretch’ the balloon. But once the balloon begins to stretch it is easy to slowly to blow and stretch the surface of the balloon until the balloon bursts.
So many of you know that the balloon bursts in time period which could be describe as being almost instantaneous. And that near instantaneous period after bursting is what we see (small pieces) in the photos.
It’s all very simple if we imagine what we literally could not see because things are happening too quickly. That is only if we have had the RIGHT COMMON EXPERIENCE.
For, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” (Einstein)
Have a good day, Jerry
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Michael Clarke
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Jerry and PSI readers,
Jerry’s comment belies the truth for which there are many versions.
Firstly the way magma erupts is specific to the type of magma.
Secondly is the shape of the vent through which it escapes.
Thirdly the viscosity and the shape of the body of magma that produced the eruption. The list is almost endless!
Those things combined to make the spectacular event that is captured and shown here. Had there been video footage it would have shown some variation, but sadly still photos are all that were captured. That fountain showed many different forms of which that picture is the most evocative.
Regards
Michael Logician
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Michael,
Glad to learn that you are still with us!!! Will digest your comments and respond to them later as you ponder what you can see at this link (https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/this-huge-crack-in-kenya-could-split-africa-in-two/ss-AAOD29D)
My wife just drew this to my attention this morning, but don’t overlook the date of these pictures. Why didn’t I learn of them nearly two months ago??? For, one cannot deny that these pictures are ‘earth shaking’.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Michael,
I am impatient this morning and cannot wait for any reply to my comment.
I doubt these photos are the result of a video but I am pretty sure that these still photos are one frame of a high speed movie camera. For I wrote “the balloon bursts in time period which could be describe as being almost instantaneous” and I stick with that conclusion. No way a person could have taken that ‘still’ photo because our reflexes are not fast enough.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Michael and PSI Readers,
I have gone to my old globe which indicate the presence of mountains by color and feel (bumps on its surface. First I find that Kenya cracks are found very near the equator and just to the North of the equator is a low land and just to the South of it are found a mountain range.
And I consider it is not ‘rocket science’ to conclude that the mass of the mountains might be compressing any molten lava beneath them and that this molten lave is lifting the thinner crust to the North and cracking its surface layer.
Maybe this idea has been considered before, but I cannot remember having read it.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Jerry Krause
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Hi Michael and PSI Readers,
You wrote: “The list is almost endless!” And I haven’t responded to the TRUTH of your statement. However, you began: “Jerry’s comment belies the truth for which there are many versions.”
First, I make this comment in an effort to engage you in further comments, In this case we have photographs which, I believe picture an actual event. Similar to our observations here on the Earth that bodies fall so fast so that we can not really see how they fall. We see them at some ‘high’ place and seemingly immediately they are on the ground. So based on this reproducible observations, philosophers reasoned: 1. Bodies twice as heavy fall twice as fast. 2. Bodies fall at a constant rate (speed). And this reasoning was accepted as the TRUTH for more than a 1000 years.
Now, I, in my short life time, I have read philosophers claiming that Galileo never actually did the experiments whose results he described. That he only did thought experiments like those early philosophers did. Now, if one reads what Galileo wrote in “Two New Sciences”. he describes experiments that anyone can do with a pendulum but a seldom, maybe never, have read anyone writing about these pendulum experiments. For which I jump to the conclusion that very few people living today have actually read what Galileo wrote. Or, if they had read his book, they have not comprehended what they read.
For one of his proposed experiments simply demonstrates the LAW we now accept as the Conservation of Angular Momentum!!!. For with his pendulum, which slowed the rate of a body falling due to the influence of gravity, Galileo was able to change the mass of the pendulum and SEE that the period of the pendulum did not change. But, when he changed the LENGTH of the pendulum its period could be measured (by using his pulse) to time the length of its period.
Now, most know that the swing (distance) sof pendulum decrease with each swing; however, I have not read that the timing of the swing does not change.
Now Michael, I write this comment to state that while there might be many versions, the SCIENTIFIC fact (based upon observations) is that only one might be correct. Might be correct because as INVENTORS have invented instruments to measure smaller details, the laws of the Conservation of Energy and the Conservation of MASS had to be changed into the LAW of the Conservation of MASS-ENERGY.
Please respond!!!
Have a good day, Jerry
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