Kayla Iacovino is a Ph.D. student who works on Antarctica’s Mount Erebus, the southernmost volcano in the world. Ironically, for a volcano, Erebus is also home to some truly stunning ice caves, carved out of nearby ice and snowpack by hot, volcanic gases. If you’ve ever watched Alien vs. Predator and wondered what it would really be like to go spelunking beneath the Frozen Continent, I’d recommend checking out the collection of photos Iacovino posted to the Science Friday website last winter.
You can also find more shots of the Erebus ice caves and fumaroles—towers of ice that form when moist gases from beneath the snow hit the freezing Antarctic air—at a gallery curated by the National Science Foundation and New Mexico Tech.
Iacovino photos found via Clifton Wiens