The US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) is responsible for an outfit called Operational Significant Event Imagery (OSEI), which ‘produces high-resolution, detailed imagery of significant environmental events which are visible in remotely-sensed data available at the NOAA Science Center in Suitland, Maryland’.

The current OSEI image of the day at their web site is a satellite image of Chaitén volcano in eruption on 2 May 2008. This image is in the public domain. To access the full image directly (jpeg, 278KB, 1024 x 800 pixels), click here.

I’ve uploaded two cropped and reduced versions below, intended to show the extent of the Chaitén ash cloud. I’ve added a scale, which was missing in the original, and tried to mark out the extent of the ash cloud in the second image.

Above: Satellite image of the volcano Chaitén in eruption, taken on 2 May 2008 at 16:28 GMT. The ash cloud extends far to the north-east and south-east of the volcano, and stretches about 500km east into Argentina.

Above: The approximate extent of the main ash cloud is marked by the yellow border and shading.

A selection of pictures of the current Chaitén eruption, with links to some videos, can be found here: Erupción del volcán Chaitén.

For all our Chaitén coverage: Chaitén << The Volcanism Blog