The Earth Observing-1 satellite captured this view of twin lava lakes in Vanuatu. One glowed brightly; the other was capped with a thin gray crust of partially-solid rock.
Antarctica’s Mount Erebus may be covered with glaciers, but they do little to cool the volcano’s molten core. A lava lake is visible at the volcano’s summit.
This pair of high-resolution images from the commercial Ikonos satellite shows the craters of Nyamuragira and Nyiragongo, both of which are located at the far eastern edge of Democratic Republic of Congo, north of Lake Kivu.
In central Africa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sit two volcanoes: Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira. Besides their proximity to Lake Kivu in the south, these volcanoes share the capacity for destruction, each having produced its share of catastrophic eruptions since the early twentieth century. Yet these volcanoes differ markedly from each other, one being a low-profiled structure rising subtly from the plain, and the other sporting steep slopes.