October 6, 2020. (Click image for high-resolution view.)
Ol Doinyo Lengai—understood to the regional Maasai individuals as the “Mountain of God”—is a stratovolcano in Tanzania with special geological attributes. This picture, taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station (ISS), catches the symmetric volcano along with canyons and lava streams formed by previous volcanic activity.
The top of Ol Doinyo Lengai is topped by a light-colored ash cone and crater, the website of the most current eruptive activity. It likewise has actually established various side vents that surround its cone. Active and ephemeral stream channels cut through the volcano’s flanks, with the bulk feeding into Lake Natron (simply out of frame to the north).
Like numerous volcanoes in the location, this cone formed in reaction to the advancement of the East African Rift system and has actually been periodically active for the past 15,000 years. This area of Africa has actually been tectonically active for more than 25 million years, leading to extremely variable topography compared to much of the continent. This divergent plate limit triggered the structure of the 2 greatest peaks in Africa—Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya—which lie near Ol Doinyo Lengai to the east and north.
Ol Doinyo Lengai is the just active volcano understood to give off natrocarbonatites, an uncommon kind of volcanic rock that is abundant in salt, potassium, and calcium carbonate, however low in silica. Lava with less silica has a lower viscosity, leading Ol Doinyo Lengai to have a few of the fastest streaming lava on the planet. In this picture, the volcano has numerous light-colored lava streams on its flanks. Initially dark lavas can lighten quickly due to chain reactions with rainwater and wetness in the air.
Astronaut picture ISS063-E-104178 was obtained on October 6, 2020, with a Nikon D5 digital cam utilizing an 800 millimeter lens and is offered by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 63 team. The image has actually been cropped and improved to enhance contrast, and lens artifacts have actually been gotten rid of. The International Space Station Program supports the lab as part of the ISS National Lab to assist astronauts take photos of Earth that will be of the best worth to researchers and the general public, and to make those images easily offered on the Internet. Caption by Sara Schmidt, GeoControl Systems, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.
