Google Street View Takes You Inside An Active Volcano

In the newest offering from its Maps stables, Google announced Wednesday that its Street View feature now offers a literally breathtaking view of one of the world’s largest lava lakes. You can now, with a click, explore the Marum crater on Ambrym island in the Pacific, one of the nine active volcanoes in the island nation of Vanuatu.

“To get inside the active volcano, we partnered with explorers Geoff Mackley and Chris Horsley, who repelled 400 meters into the Marum crater with a Street View Trekker collecting 360-degree imagery of the journey down to the molten lava lake, which is roughly the size of two football fields,” Google said in a blog post.

Speaking about the experience, Mackley said in the post: “You only realize how insignificant humans are when you’re standing next to a giant lake of fiery boiling rock.”

Co-explorer Horsley said after climbing back up: “Standing at the edge and feeling the heat lick your skin is phenomenal. I hope that by putting this place on the map people will realize what a beautiful world we live in.”

You can explore the Street View of the Marum crater using this link.

Ambrym is home to another active volcano called Benbow, which sits — along with Marum — in the same 39-square-mile volcanic caldera. About 7,000 people also live on the island and one of the villages, Endu, has also been mapped as part of the Google project.

Chief Moses of the village said the locals believe the two volcanoes to be devils, Benbow the husband and Marum the wife, which erupt when they are angry. The village can be explored using this link.