Volcano spews a fiery smiley face during eruption
A Hawaiian volcano subscribes to the "don't worry, be happy" philosophy with a glowing hot smiling face.
Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has a lot to be happy about.
Its current eruption has been going on since 1983, but that's just the latest in a long history of activity. The Pu'u O'o volcanic cone is a particular hotbed of activity. Tourists in a helicopter ride flying over the cone got two eyefuls when they looked down and spotted a grinning smiley face made from hot lava looking back up at them.
The video comes from Mick Kalber of Tropical Visions Video and Paradise Helicopters, a tour company specializing in scenic flyovers of the Hawaiian Islands.
It features five minutes of swirling vistas showing the volcano and the large arched "mouth" and two wide "eyes" that make up the face found in a lava lake inside a vent. Lava from the eruption flows into the ocean, creating large steam clouds where it reaches the water. It's like looking at the Hawaiian version of Mordor.
The footage comes from late June, but was released on YouTube on Sunday. The smiley face has been in the volcanic cone at least since February, but it recently blew up on the internet thanks to the evocative helicopter video footage. This isn't the first hot-as-Hades smiley face found in nature. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a grinning jack-o'-lantern image of the sun back in 2014.
(Via Good Morning America)