Earth; Erebus. Antarctica.

Ross Island is located across the strait of the same name from the Dry Valleys from Blood Falls. Interruption in the foreground - the edge of the glacier of the island. Cone, surrounded by a double ring of clouds in the background - Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth. Next to him on the island are its three extinct brother. In 1979, the mountain immediately took 257 lives - in New Zealand airliner crashed into the slope.



Erebus got its name in honor of one of the ships of the expedition discovered it in 1841. James C. Ross (the same ships were later used by John Franklin during his ill-fated Arctic expedition), and the ship, in turn, was named in honor of Erebus - incarnation of the eternal darkness, the son of Chaos and the father of Thanatos, Nemesis, Eris, Charon and other similar entities.



Here, a weak spot in the aura of the Earth. The minimum thickness of the ozone layer in the atmosphere - the epicenter of the famous "ozone hole" - there is just over the Ross Sea, where the Erebus. This is suppose to blame exudes volcano hydrogen and methane.





In 1908, a group of Edgeworth David Shackleton Expedition first climbed to the top of Erebus 3794 m, where they found a crater 805 m. And a depth of 274 m, the bottom of which was a lake of molten lava. It is not frozen and today - Erebus is one of three volcanoes with non-healing lava lakes. Periodically erupting volcano began hurling bombs.



Volcanic bomb with a diameter of 6 meters on the slopes of Erebus.

The mountain slopes are heated breath subsoil, in some places it almost breaks out. Ice melts over such sites below, forming caves and warm moist air coming out of them through the ice tube. Condensing in contact with the thirty-forty-degree frost prevails outside, steam is constantly increasing the walls of these "chimneys". Here's the height of more than 18 meters:





Another "ice chimney" on the slopes of Erebus. The height of 3550 meters above sea level; midnight local time. Polar day.





In the caves beneath the ice - about 0 ° C and 100% humidity. Condensable vapor and dripping water forming ice beauty. Unlike conventional ceiling stone caves are sometimes translucent and possibly on smooth boulders of lava, protects icy dome from the outer erosion in some places there moss or algae owed to complex animals. However, studies on this subject I found nothing.