Kilbourne Hole is the crater of a maar volcano in southern New Mexico, just across the state line from El Paso, Texas.
I went there the weekend before last with a team from El Paso Community College, led by Joshua Villalobos. This is the place where xenobombs come from!
If you go to the right area, you can find dozens of these mantle xenoliths sheathed in fine-grained basalt, like chocolate-coated peanuts. There are also lower crustal xenoliths; gneisses and stuff like that. But nothing beats peridotite for sheer ‘otherworldly’ beauty and awe.
We also saw these beautiful outcrops of volcanic blocks that got ker-plumped down into the pyroclastic surge deposits:
Ron Schott produced a wonderful overview GigaPan of the site back in 2009:
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So rather than the broad landscape, we concentrated our efforts on smaller outcrops, like this informative scene:
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Annotated:
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Same place, zoomed out a bit, and from a higher perspective (and a bit overexposed):
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Annotated:
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Now for the really sexy stuff! Here is one of those volcanic block plopped like a dropstone into the pyroclastics:
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Another, similar scene…
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And closer in:
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I trained Josh and his students on the use of their new GigaPan, and we had a great time. Here’s the El Paso CC / UTEP team on the rim of the Hole:
A great trip and a great experience, Thanks again!
Is this part of the Solaris Grant? Also what is giga panning?
Yes, it was supported by SOLARIS.
GigaPanning is making really big pictures (GIGApixel PANoramas) with a special robotic camera and stitching software. Try exploring the images to see what I mean — they “zoom in” when you click on them.
The images posted from Kilbourne above, would you be willing to share those with a local magazine?
Hi Morgan,
What magazine? What’s the article?
Thanks,
CB
Thank you for your quick response. It would be for Las Cruces magazine and go with an article about Kilbourne Hole. The image(s) would be attributed to the photographer/organization you requested.
Sure thing. I presume you’ll need a higher-resolution version? I’m the photographer.
Yes please, 270dpi+ is wonderful. My email is above and please let me know how you’d like the attribution to read. We typically state: Courtesy _____
Specifically the image with the xenobomb. Thanks!