This 3D fly-through movie shows the seafloor in the Magic Mountain area of Explorer Ridge, as mapped by the SM2000 sonar system on the ABE autonomous vehicle. The SM2000 is a multibeam sonar that provides the highest possible resolution, and this was the first time it had ever been used on ABE. The Magic Mountain hydrothermal area has five separate chimney clusters, each with 10-50 individual high-temperature hotsprings. The mapped area is 3 km by 2 km and the resolution is 1 meter. (Movie courtesy of Clay Hamilton and Bill Chadwick.) Download largest version (mp4, 2.5 MB).
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