Well today was the first full day of broadcast and has been full of wonderful things to see and do. But let me take you back to yesterday to set the scene.
Day dawned at 6am at the hotel we were staying at which is aptly called Volcano House. The view was really spectacular. We were sited right on the rim of the crater of Kilauea, the most active in the world. The rising sun cast a fiery red glow over the whole landscape which was like a scene from another planet, the ground strewn with rocks from a previous explosion caused by water falling through cracks and instantly turning to steam. Over the whole area wisps of steam were still rSTUDENT ARGONAUTS!!!! These guys rain showers adding eerily to the early formed a team t Today we started at 1.30 am I have never got up to start work that early, but over the next few days I will have to get used to it. We have a 40 minute drive to the broadcast site and we start the first programme at 5.00am in order to allow the USA to receive the broadcasts troughout the school day and the UK to see the shows live at 3pm. There is a 10 hour time difference between us and them.
During the drive down we were all amazed to see how clear the sky was and how many stars we could see. It is no wonder that so many countries have built telescopes and observatories over here. As we neared the site we could see a bright orannge glow in the sky from the cone of Pu'u' O'o a vent on the side of the volcano which is throwing out a lot of lava at the moment.
Just before we arrived this week, the volcano became much more active and is spilling out a lot of lava. It has over-run the road we are working on to a depth of nearly 6 feet and is throwinBye for now. There are Argonhydrochloric acid into the air where it i Teri Dannenberg
200 yards further down the slope. The project has been really lucky to have such activity to show the audiences. I was on the show this morning, walking on the lava fields in the dark amongst bright red-hot molten rock. The air temperature was in the region of 110 Celcius and we could only work on it for a few minutes at a time before we had to come off and it was an unfogettable experience. All the rock is really hot as it is being heated by magma below. It is so hot that when you spill water on parts of it it turns instantly to steam and the bottom of my boots have started to melt.
We are also using one of the observatories to observe the volcanoes on Io, one of Jupiters moons. Last week, during the project one of the largest eruptions ever viewed was seen on one of the shows so it has really been a fantastic start.
Signing out
Richard Cooper - Teacher Argonaut
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