Lake of Molten Lava

Photo: Olivier Grunewald

It looks like French photographer Olivier Grunewald has gone to Orodruin, the fabled volcano of Mordor – but the otherworldly lake of molten lava is actually very much on Earth. Boston’s The Big Picture has 28 fascinating photos of Grunewald’s journey to Hell on Earth, AKA the Nyiragongo Crater in Africa:

In June 2010, a team of scientists and intrepid explorers stepped onto the shore of the lava lake boiling in the depths of Nyiragongo Crater, in the heart of the Great Lakes region of Africa. The team had dreamed of this: walking on the shores of the world’s largest lava lake. Members of the team had been dazzled since childhood by the images of the 1960 documentary "The Devil’s Blast" by Haroun Tazieff, who was the first to reveal to the public the glowing red breakers crashing at the bottom of Nyiragongo crater. Photographer Olivier Grunewald was within a meter of the lake itself, giving us a unique glimpse of it’s molten matter.

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