Mount Michael
Mount Michael (Spanish: Monte Miguel) is an active volcanic mountain, 805 m (2640 ft), surmounting Saunders Island in the South Sandwich Islands, a British Overseas Territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It is one of the few volcanoes in an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. The island was discovered by a British expedition under Cook in 1775, but the mountain was presumably first charted in 1820 by a Russian expedition under Bellingshausen. Recharted in 1930 by DI personnel on the Commander W.M. Carey, Royal Navy, captain of the Discovery II at the time of the survey.
Mount Michael | |
---|---|
Saunders Island | |
Highest point | |
Elevation | 990 m (3,250 ft) |
Prominence | 990 m (3,250 ft) |
Coordinates | 57°48′13″S 26°28′52″W |
Geography | |
Location | Saunders Island, South Sandwich Islands |
Geology | |
Mountain type | Stratovolcano |
Last eruption | 2019 (ongoing) |
Persistent lava lake
In 2019, it was discovered that Mount Michael has a persistent lava lake, a rare phenomenon which is known to occur at only eight volcanoes in the world.[1][2]
References
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Robin George Andrews (2019-07-12). "A Burning Lava Lake Concealed by a Volcano's Glacial Ice". The New York Times. Retrieved 2019-07-17.
The area is often cloudy, and a seemingly constant volcanic plume conceals the lake most of the time. Fortunately, the team collected enough shots of the lake from 2003 to 2018 that clearly showed a crater floor containing a superheated lake 295 to 705 feet across. The lava is also 1,812 to 2,334 degrees Fahrenheit, with the higher end of that range about as hot as lava on Earth seems to get.
- "Remote Mount Michael volcano hosts persistent lava lake". BBC News. BBC News. Retrieved 3 July 2019.