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Smiling Volcano
This volcano in Hawaii was all smiles during an ongoing eruption this past summer. A filmmaker flying above Kilauea captured this cheerful image of the accidental jack-o’-lantern.
Parts of Kilauea have been erupting nonstop for 33 years. The smiley face formed on a lava lake—a pool of molten rock inside a volcanic crater. A dark layer of cooled lava covers the surface of the lake. As lava churns within the crater, that surface can pull apart, revealing glowing orange lava underneath. At Kilauea, the cracks formed what looked like a smile.
“The lava is always changing,” says Janet Babb, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. “It was total chance that the smiley face formed.”
Many volcanoes like Kilauea erupt on and off for years. Approximately when did Guatemala’s Santa María eruption begin?