APOD 2.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101101.html

This is a shot from Réunion island, which is a French island east of Madagascar. The wikipedia says the Furcifer Padalis(Panther Chameleon) is one of the native species, so here is a picture of that. Pretty cool, right? It's a chameleon.

But back to the first picture. The volcano in the foreground is the Piton de la Fournaise (Peak of the Furnace in English). It is one of the world's most active volcanoes and a major tourist attraction on the island. Last month, it started an eruption.

Hot lava bombs, which are masses of volcanic rock, were spewed up to 10 meters in the air. Luc Perrot, who also made this really cool 3-D model (http://www.lucperrot.fr/?multimedia/eruption_volcan_vr), captured it on film whilst the Milky Way, our galaxy, was visible. The stellar disk of the milky way is 100,000 lightyears. The Pleiades is also visible, which is a famous open star cluster. Also visible is Orion the Hunter and its star Alpha Canis Majoris, or Sirius.