Grand Prismatic Spring Vista
by Angelo Marcialis
Title
Grand Prismatic Spring Vista
Artist
Angelo Marcialis
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
A return visit allowed me to hike the Fairy Falls trail to capture this natural wonder from the overlook, and to take in the immense size of the Grand Prismatic Spring.!
I had photographed this spring from ground level a few days earlier, but it is not until you are looking down at it that you get the true sense on how amazing this spectacle is.
The light was perfect, and the sky offered enough drama to compliment this beautiful geothermal feature.
What Makes the Grand Prismatic so Grand?
Deeper than a 10-Story Building: Extremely hot water travels 121 feet from a crack in the Earth to reach the surface of the spring.
Football Field on Steroids:The third largest spring in the world, the Grand Prismatic is bigger than a football field at 370 feet in diameter. A gridiron is 360 feet long and 160 feet wide.
Rainbow of Colors: The hot spring has bright bands of orange, yellow, and green ring the deep blue waters in the spring. The multicolored layers get their hues from different species of thermophile (heat-loving) bacteria living in the progressively cooler water around the spring. And the deep blue center? That’s because water scatters the blue wavelengths of light more than others, reflecting blues back to our eyes.
A Living Thermometer: What living thing in Yellowstone has helped investigators solve crimes and NASA search for extraterrestrial life on seemingly inhospitable planets? Heat-loving microbes living in the Yellowstone's thermal pools. In 1968, researcher Thomas Brock discovered a microbe living in one of Yellowstone’s extremely hot springs. In the years since, research on Yellowstone’s microbes has led to major medical and scientific advances, including the sequencing of the entire human genome.
Uploaded
October 22nd, 2018
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