simple facts
Where is it? Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming [44.46284445, -110.3628428]
What is in the photo? A blanket of white snow covers Yellowstone Lake
Who took the photo? An unknown astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS)
When was it taken? January 26, 2022
This eye-catching astronaut photo shows Yellowstone’s eponymous lake covered in thick snow, making it look like a colorless, featureless void in the surrounding landscape. But beneath this subzero empty space are some of the most active and hottest hydrothermal vents anywhere on Earth.
The lake freezes each winter around late December to early January, with an ice sheet ranging from a few inches to about 2 feet (0.6 m) thick. But the snow on top of this ice could reach a depth of 1.1 meters by March, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. The lake is typically free of snow and ice by late May to early June.
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The thick snowpack means Yellowstone Lake is remarkably resilient to human-induced climate change, maintaining surface ice thickness despite rising atmospheric temperatures. This makes this lake a major outlier among highland lakes around the world.
The astronaut’s photo shows one deep snowdrift, largely undisturbed except for a few islands, the largest of which is Stevenson Island.
During the winter, Yellowstone Lake’s surface may seem cold and lifeless, but the water below remains surprisingly calm thanks to a series of hydrothermal vents spread across the lake bed. This allows aquatic animals, including the cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkei) population in the largest lake of its kind in North America, to survive for months under the ice, according to the NPS.
One of the spouts, located right next to Stevenson Island, releases water at an astonishing 345 degrees Fahrenheit (174 degrees Celsius), hotter than Old Faithful and all other geysers and hot springs in Yellowstone National Park.
“These hot springs are much hotter than any surface hot springs in Yellowstone, because the weight of the overlying lake water acts like a pressure cooker lid, allowing them to reach temperatures above boiling,” U.S. Geological Survey representatives wrote in an article about the lake’s vents. “These are the hottest hydrothermal vents measured in lakes around the world.”
The vent is powered by a huge mass of magma that lies about 2.6 miles (3.8 km) underground in Yellowstone National Park and contains an astonishing amount of lava. This mass of magma acts like a giant volcanic bottle cap that will one day explode, causing a “supervolcanic” eruption that can be felt across the continent.
Yellowstone Lake was formed shortly after a similar eruption 640,000 years ago, which carved out the 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) of caldera on which the lake now stands. About 130,000 years ago, a small eruption then chipped away at a doorknob-shaped handle in a lake called West Thumb (visible near the top of the astronaut photo).
For more amazing satellite photos and astronaut images, check out Earth from the Space Archives.
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