It is a matter of immense pleasure that a team of scientists and explorers stepped onto the shore of the lava lake boiling in the depths of Nyiragongo Crater, in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The molten matter of the volcano has been captured in camera from a minimum distance of 1 meter by the courageous photographer Olivier Grunewald.
Obviously the act has been performed with proper safety and scientific equipments. The camera was also prepared to protect 1300 degree Celsius heat. Nobody is encouraged here to repeat the same without any precaution to make a history, it was purely a professional arrangement under strict abidance of scientific and safety rules by highly experienced scientists, who had also undergone a four months training for the purpose. During the expedition the members of this team were in contact through radio uninterruptedly to chase the movement of the gas and lava.
The goal of this expedition was to enhance volcanologists’ knowledge so that mankind can be saved from disaster from the flame of volcano in the future by perfect prediction in this context.
Mount Nyiragongo is a stratovolcano (or sometimes termed as composite volcano) in the Virunga Mountains associated with the Great Rift Valley. Stratas means layers. So, the said volcano is a tall, conical volcano built up by many layers of hardened lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash. Normally the lava that flows from stratovolcanoes typically cools and hardens before spreading far due to high viscosity. However extensive felsic lava can flow up to 15 kilometers before solidified because of its thixotropic and shear thinning properties. Felsic is a geological term which refers to silicate minerals, magma, and rocks enriched in the lighter elements such as oxygen, sodium, potassium, silicon and aluminum.
Lava is a type of molten or melted rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption. This molten rock is formed in the interior of Earth. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava is a liquid at temperatures from 700 degree Celsius to 1,200 degree Celsius equal to 1300 degree Fahrenheit to2200 degree Fahrenheit and up to 100,000 times as viscous as water.
Nyiragongo's lava lake has at times been the most voluminous known lava lake in recent history with an estimated 282 million cubic feet of lava. It is located inside Virunga National Park, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 20 km north of the town of Goma. Goma is a city in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the northern shore of Lake Kivu, next to Rwanda. The main crater is about two km wide and usually contains a lava lake.
Volcanism at Nyiragongo is caused by the rifting of the Earth's crust where two parts of the African Plate are breaking apart. The African Plate is a tectonic plate which includes the continent of Africa, as well as oceanic crust which lies between the continent and various surrounding ocean ridges.
The Nyiragongo mission is a great event which will be marked as a milestone in the history of geology. "News and Features” takes the pride to congratulate the whole team including Olivier Grunewald, Jacques Barthelemy, Dario Tedesco, Pierre-Yves Burgi, Franck Pothé and Marc Caillet for this historic success.
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