Back in 2005, we visited the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii. There were active lava flows at the time, but the main caldera was only venting gases (this was before the lava lake formed in Halema‘uma‘u).

We followed the road around the main caldera, then down to the coast to see where lava flows had obliterated the road and look at active flows waaaay off in the distance.

With the current eruption transforming the area, I’ve just uploaded an album to Flickr. You can look at the full-sized images there, or look back at my original blog posts in which I describe the trip.

Wide flat area with cliffs rising to the right, treetops in the foreground.

Expanded from a post at Photog.Social

Thurston Cave Ghosts

A long exposure shot in Thurston Lava Tube on the big island of Hawaii, capturing ghostly images of people walking through. I originally posted a color version along with other photos from the visit back in 2005, and converted it to black and white for my entry in this week’s “eerie” photo challenge on WordPress.com. If I’d known it would look so much better in black and white, I would have converted it years ago.

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day features a view of Mauna Kea’s shadow on the sky, just at the tail end of last week’s lunar eclipse:

Mauna Kea Shadow from APOD (photo by Alex Mukensnable)

I couldn’t help but be reminded of our visit to the summit in April 2005, just at sunset, when I took this similar (but decidedly less cool) photo:

Atmospheric Optics explains why most mountains’ shadows look triangular when viewed from their summits.