From El Malpais and Carnival of Space #109

While at the Sandstone overlook in El Malpais National Monument, New Mexico, I took a series of photos using my Canon PowerShot A510 (not the best camera, I know) to be used in making several panoramas. I've cleaned up one of them for you all to check out. The foreground rocks are from the sandstone bluff with basaltic rocks from the McCartys Flow filling the middle ground. The more vegetated areas are covered in smoother, pahohoe-style rocks, while the bare, dark areas (like in the patches on the right in the cropped version above) are covered in a'a flows. The McCartys flow is around 3,000 years old. In the background you can see some of the great mountains of northwestern New Mexico, such as Gallo Peak in the middle of the crop above.

You can download the full 360-degree panorama here.

In other news, the latest edition of the Carnival of Space, #109, is now online at the blog Twisted Physics.