A volcano can be simply defined as a rupture or an opening on the crust of a planet like earth. This opening allows hot ash, molten rock and gases to blow off from the underground spaces. Volcanoes generally acquire shape of a mountain. Volcanoes are usually found at places where tectonic plates get converged or diverged. But there existence at a particular place depends upon many environmental and geological factors. Volcanoes can also occur at a place because of hot spots or mantle plumes. Even hotspot volcanoes are very common at other planets of solar system especially on moons and rock based planets.
Features of volcanoes
Common features of volcanoes are lava, conical shaped mountain and release of poisonous gases from the carter situated at the summit of the volcanoes. These are most common features attained by almost all of the active volcanoes. But describing complete features of all the volcanoes is a very tedious thing, because shape, attributes and behavior of different volcanoes depends upon different factors. For example some volcanoes have a Steve peak formed as the lava dome on the other hand other possesses a crater at the summit. More exciting types of volcanoes are ice volcanoes (cryovolcanoes) and mud volcanoes, these volcanoes exist on moons of Saturn, Neptune and Jupiter.
Different Type of Volcanoes and Eruptions
Shield volcanoes- these are broad shielded volcanoes formed by eruptions of lava having low viscosity. Lava of these volcanoes usually don’t get explode out but it can travel a large distance with very low velocities.
Lava domes- these are the volcanoes which came into origin by eruptions of lava with high viscosity. These volcanoes produce very violent and explosive eruptions. Their lava don’t travel large distances from the vent.
Stratovolcanoes- These are also called as composite volcanoes. These are tall mountains of conical shapes; these volcanoes are composed of flowing lava and