Here’s an alien landscape that strikes me as appropriate given that NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully touched down on Mars last night. The EDL team deserves an enormous high five for pulling off the amazingly audacious plan that got a 900kg robot safely onto the surface using parachutes and a rocket-powered “skycrane” platform. Wow!
Getting back to this picture, though, it shows an outflow of fresh lave at the end of one of the lava tubes from the active Pu’u O’o vent on Kilauea, Hawaii. This one emerges in the middle of what used to be the “Royal Gardens” subdivision on the Big Island.
Newly solidified lava, as seen here, is shiny but it turns black as it cools.