Gallery | Volcanoes from Space 2 | Double your volcanic paradise
Tahiti is known as a tropical paradise for good reason, but the island is actually made of two volcanoes connected by a narrow and short isthmus. The larger one, Tahiti-Nui, is older, with lava rocks dated to 1.7 million years ago. Tahiti-Iti, the smaller one, has lava less than a million years old.
Both shield volcanoes have collapsed, and heavy erosion from rainfall has radically changed their appearance from all that time ago when they formed. This Landsat 7 image makes all that very clear... though I imagine from ground level it's far, far tougher to see.
Original image
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Both shield volcanoes have collapsed, and heavy erosion from rainfall has radically changed their appearance from all that time ago when they formed. This Landsat 7 image makes all that very clear... though I imagine from ground level it's far, far tougher to see.
Original image
Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
