Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Lunar Crater volcanic field, Nevada




I was on my way to San Francisco / AGU last week when I saw these volcanoes and shot these pictures through the airplane window. It turns out that this is the Lunar Crater volcanic field in Nevada, named after the largest crater that is more than 1000 meters across and about 130 m deep. There are 95 vents that are 4.2 million to 15,000 years old. Lunar Crater is the largest feature in the image below; it is a maar; most of the other vents formed cinder cones.




Here is a map showing the Houston - San Francisco flight track and the location of the volcanic field:


View Lunar Crater volcanic field in a larger map

1 comments:

soubriquet said...

This looks so very similar to some areas of Iceland. When I was there in the late seventies/early eighties, on the volcanic ash-plain just north-west of mount Hekla, you could still see wheel tracks of where, according to my Icelandic friends, Nasa did some lunar e.v.a. training. Yet all the time, the moon was there in Nevada!

 
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