This volcano is on Ross Island, near McMurdo Station (USA) and Scott Base (New Zealand). [Note: McMurdo Station sits on the mainland of the Antarctica continent]. Mount Erebus is the southernmost active volcano on Earth (at approximately 77.5°S, 167.1º E) and is one of the only few volcanoes that is consistently active. Ross Island also has three other volcanoes, but they are inactive. Mount Erebus was discovered in 1841 by the polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross. In Greek mythology, the father of Erebus was Chaos, and Erebus’ mother was Gaia (or Earth). Erebus was made of darkness, and he filled the corners of the world with darkness; thus, Erebus means a “dark region.”
Figure 1. Antarctica in relation to South America and Africa (a Google Earth image), and the location of Mount Erebus.
Figure 2. Location of Mount Erebus on Ross Island.
Mount Erebus has been active for 1.3 million years. It is a polygenetic stratovolcano composed of anorthosite-porhyrite and tephrite phonolite. The bottom half is a shield volcano, whereas the upper half, whose slope dips approximately 30°, is a strato-volcano, with a lava lake in its inner summit crater. This lava (magma) lake is permanent, and there is continuous degassing (Wikipedia). Also, it spews out, on the average, 80 grams of gold a day, all of it is dissolved in the sulfurous volcanic gases (atlasobuscua.com/places/mt-erebus).
Figure 3. Side view of Mount Erebus, as seen from a tourist ship on the Ross Sea. You can readily see the dual-aspect of the shape of this volcano.
Figure 4. Caldera (housing a lava lake) at the top of Mount Erebus. There are two inactive calderas on the flank of the active caldera.
Figure 5. NASA satellite image showing the glowing, active lava lake in the active caldera at the top of Mount Erebus.
There are fumarolic ice towers, up to 60 feet high, associated with this volcano, and they form around escaping gases on the surface of the volcano.
Figure 6. A fumarolic ice tower (a public domain image taken in 2010 by Peter Rejeck, National Science Foundation, see photolibrary, usap.gov). The original of this image is on the public domain website: atlasobscura.com/places/mt-erebus).
Additionally, there are dark ice caves associated with this volcano. They have relatively warm temperatures (a constant of 32°, making them likely to be home to extremeophile organisms (e.g., moss, algae, some arthropods, and some nematodes can live in these caves) (Wikipedia).
Websites Consulted
atlasobuscua.com/places/mt-erebus
coolantarctica.com
en.Wikipedia.org
photolibrary.usap.gov
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