Old Faithful At Sunset

Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.
Today's picture features a beautiful sunset silhouette of the geyser known around the world as Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park's most popular tourist attraction. Old Faithful got its name because its eruptions of water and steam occur at more or less regular intervals - every 80 minutes on average. You can almost set your watch by it!

Geysers are among nature's most interesting phenomena. This special type of hot spring erupts when geothermal energy causes water to heat up to the point where the increasing pressure becomes too great for the confined space in which it lies to hold it. An explosion then sends water and steam shooting out of the earth and up into the air until the pressure subsides.

Although hot springs are fairly common on the surface of the earth, geysers are quite rare. In fact, there are only about 1,000 geysers on the entire planet - and over half of them are in Yellowstone National Park!

Old Faithful is the world's most famous geyser, but it isn't the world's largest. Actually, it isn't even the largest geyser in Yellowstone! That distinction goes to Steamboat Geyser in Norris Geyser Basin. So when planning your next Yellowstone vacation, be sure to visit Old Faithful...but keep in mind that there are plenty of other geysers in the area - and several of them put on shows that are quite spectacular!

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