Photo of the Day 420

Moss-Covered Rocks, Vatnajökull Glacier, Iceland, 1997

Photograph by Steve Winter

Wildflowers peek out amid a vast jumble of moss-covered rocks near Iceland’s Vatnajökull Glacier. This view is deceptively peaceful, as Iceland is perched above the volatile Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates pull apart, creating an extensive and active volcano zone.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Iceland’s Trial by Fire," May 1997, National Geographic magazine)

Photo of the Day 416

Volcanic Chasm, Vatnajökull Glacier, Iceland, 1997

Photograph by Steve Winter

A column of hissing steam emerges from a gaping 600-foot (180-meter) chasm in Iceland’s Vatnajökull Glacier. Scalding magma transforms water, pooled at the bottom of this abyss, into billowing steam. In 1996, two weeks after an enormous volcanic eruption beneath the ice cap, billions of gallons of meltwater gushed from a glacial lake, causing Iceland’s worst deluge in 60 years.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Iceland’s Trial by Fire," May 1997, National Geographic magazine)