Voliconos

Following on from the most recent issue, here are pictures of people who look like volcanoes. Let me know if you have any more.

Cyndi Lauper- I'll try and stop going on about much I love her- but look how cool she is!

Little My- should also probably stop going on about how much I love Moomins, her temper adds to her volcanicity and apparently I look like her, may also be due to grumpiness. 

Sideshow Bob- hair is the main way in which a person can resemble a volcano

Amy Winehouse- many reasons for this one

James Dean- smoking enhances a volcano likeness (see above), a personal style icon and the reason why I carry a comb in my pocket.

Brian Blessed- looks and acts like a volcano

Louis Saha- people say this hairstyle was a mistake but the poor boy was just trying to look like a volcano.

Bjork- like many on this list, I just really love her

Steve Bruce- pre eruption

Gerard Depardieu- crater nose

Regan McNeil- is her name, vomit is a bit like lava I suppose. 

So in conclusion most people don't look that much like volcanoes but this has been a very welcome opportunity to tell people how great Cyndi, Little My, James Dean and Bjork are.

Volcanoes of Christmasses past, present and yet to come

Spot the three volcanoes in the picture. Volcano Club Christmas Card from everyone at Volcano Club- so me and Roxy, who is my alter ego, so just me really. You will only be lucky enough to get this card if you receive your copy after Christmas day (to emphasise the unpredictability of volcanoes). Hope everyone had a Happy Christmas and has a good New Year and an especially Merry Melbourne!

Issue Three

Two days later than hoped but here it is- Issue Three. A lovely late Christmas present copies available from all good retailers.

Charley Harper Volcano

I had a lot of time to kill yesterday and I went to the bookshop Magma (I'm only mentioning the name because magma is what's in a volcano so it was kinda like I was actually inside a volcano, which was obviously very enjoyable). Looking through one of my favourite books 'Charley Harper, An Illustrated Life' - which I may or may not be getting for Christmas, I saw an incredibly beautiful volcano which mainly shows the volcano gases. I think it's from the Giant Book of Biology or something similar which is full of brilliant illustrations that are also scientifically accurate.

Google search found this pretty Charley Harper cool poster of Hawaii volcanoes. 

Next Volcano Club Issue will be out on Christmas Eve (two days) so if I see you around the Christmas period you will probably get a copy as a present, if I don't you can probably still have one.

And of Clay We Are Created

When this is the second paragraph in a story,

First a subterranean sob rocked the cotton fields, curling them like waves of foam. Geologists had set their seismographs weeks before, and they knew that the mountain had awakened again. For some time they had predicted that the heat of the eruption could detach the the eternal from the slopes of the volcano, but no one headed their; warnings; they sounded like the tales of frightened old women. 

you know it's going to be good.  It's pretty much guaranteed that everything good in life will somehow (however tenuously) be linked to volcanoes, the theory has now been proven for Isabel Allende. This is an extract from The Stories of Eva Luna, which is a follow up to the novel 'Eva Luna'. It's a book of short stories told by Eva so it's stories within stories which is always nice. Many of the stories contain the same characters as Eva Luna, this one concerns Rolf Carle who ends up as Eva's lover (don't worry this isn't a spoiler). Rolf is reporting on the volcano erpution and encounters a girl, Azucena, trapped in the rubble as they both struggle for her survival and suffering he is reminded of the forgotten suffering of his childhood.

This was probably my favourite story in the book, but I am slightly volcano biased so the others are all also probably worth reading.

How do volcanoes in space greet one another?

Io (an answer to the joke and a greeting to readers of this post)

I seem to remember reading that Io (one of Jupiter's Moons) was the only other celestial body in our solar systam to have active volcanoes. My good friend Alice reminded me of this yesterday when she woke me with a text telling the next The Sky at Night episode will be about volcanoes in space. Soon after realising that I hadn't actually been stirred by the fall of another wicket, I remembered this fact about Io, Alice needs confirmation from Sir Patrick, I now think I do too and maybe Io just has the most volcanism. Whatever the case, it has some which is cool so here are some facts about it.

Io has high orbital eccentricity, which means it is an elliptical shape, this means it has large gravitational pull, resulting in large tidal heating and this causes it's volcanism. Earth's volcanoes are due to magma movement from the geothermal activity or something like that (I really hope no physicists read the blog, actually I don't think anyone really reads it, so I should definitely make more stuff up).  There are three types of eruptions that occur on Io; intra-patera eruptions, flow-dominated eruptions and explosion dominated eruptions. Intra-patera eruptions occur in pateras which are caldera-like depressions on the moons surface, these can eruptions can be divided into those that with lava flows and those with lava lakes (a pool connected to a magma reservoir). Flow dominated eruptions seem to be similar to earth's Hawaiian eruption in that they continue for long periods of time and are often from lava tubes and fissures. Like Plinian eruptions, Explosion dominated eruptions are spectacular and violent, they occur when a magma body reaches a fissure and often produce lava fountains.

Hopefully there will more on this in next weeks The Sky at Night so I will be able to fill in all those gaps in my extraterrestrial volcano knowledge and pass on some wisdom. Issue Three will be out for in time for Christmas and I'm pretty sure that everyone you know would want a copy of the magazine so get ordering.
Finally here is another blog with a volcano of the week feature- definitely a copy of mine! http://www.gishbartimes.org/2010_08_01_archive.html

A pun involving snow and volcanoes

As in England we have had a lot of snow it seemed the only plausible way to celebrate was to have a snowball fight, mulled wine, mince pies and brandy cream and to make a volcano out of snow. This did however create a large debate between Emma, Isaac and me over what to call said volcano made from snow; hence the post title. The best puns we could think of involving snow and volcanoes are volcansnow, voliceno, or snowcano, in order to avoid arguments started combining puns and came up with such gems as snowcansnow, volicesnow and eventually settled on snowicesnow. But I couldn't put this as the title because it makes no sense.

This is the volcano (snowicesnow) pre-eruption. I don't think I really need to explain how to make this, the only tips I will give are that the angle of the volcano shouldn't be more than 45degrees. If this volcano it is entirely the fault of Emma and Isaac who probably both need some volcano education or volcation. Those of you who like things to be scientifically accurate could make a magma chamber, which should be made early on and then the rest of the volcano built around it.

This is the volcano after eruption, to get this effect all you need to do is chuck some leaves over the volcano.