Further images of Inferno North Face

I’ve been extracting video and images from Jason dive J1096, which occurred after the installation of COVIS. This dive focused on temperature and flowmeter measurements of venting sites on Mushroom and Inferno, and includes quite a bite of close-up video of both vents. The wide-angle video is generally not as usable as J1092: the science instrumentation visible on JASON’s “porch” occludes some of the field of view, and the ROV generally spends less little time loitering, instead focusing on the sampling mission.

During this dive, the ROV spent focused time sampling the NE Vent, lower half of the North Face cluster, and the SE base vent.

Unfortunately, the sampling did not include the upper end of the North Face cluster / the top of Inferno.

This image shows the central/lower portion of the North Face cluster. The NE cluster is visible at center-left, and the “Protruding vent” is shown at the bottom. Comparing the chimney structures with:

the larger central chimney is present in both, but one of the smaller chimneys just below has broken off in the two days between the dives.

A closer examination of the area near the center of the image above (just above the right end of the T-handle on the temperature probe) shows the smaller-scale variability of surface types on the vent:

The video also features sampling of the NE Vent although that video is heavily occluded by the scientific sampling equipment on the ROV.