Introducing VPOW: Volcano Picture Of the Week 4 May 2010
Posted by admin in volcano images, volcanoes.Tags: volcano images, volcano photography, Volcano Picture Of the Week
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If you are a volcano photographer you may be interested in Volcano Picture Of the Week, a new project by Richard Roscoe (of Photovolcanica). VPOW is a non-commercial website for presenting high quality volcano photographs. Submissions are invited from interested photographers, and one image will be selected for presentation each week (on the model of the popular and much-admired Astronomy Picture of the Day).
Visit the site for further information, and to see great volcano pictures in the archive.
Climbing Pacaya’s lava stairs (at Mountain Beltway) 23 February 2010
Posted by admin in Guatemala, Pacaya.Tags: geoblogs, Guatemala, lava, Pacaya, volcano images
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Over at Mountain Beltway Callan Bentley has posted some great images of Pacaya, one of the most active volcanoes of Guatemala. A friend of his climbed the volcano (she didn’t go right to the top, ‘just high enough to get up close and personal with some lava’) and took pictures on the way – the climb being facilitated by still-warm ‘lava stairs’. The results can be seen on Callan’s blog: Pacaya Volcano, Guatemala. There is also a link to more pictures at Flickr. Strongly recommended for all lovers of lava.
Information
Global Volcanism Program: Pacaya – information about Pacaya (1402-11=)
Redoubt eruption sequence is Earth Science Picture of the Day 13 February 2010
Posted by admin in Alaska, Redoubt.Tags: Alaska, Redoubt, United States, volcano images
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The Universities Space Research Association Earth Science Picture of the Day for 13 February 2010 is a sequence taken by the USGS’s Bill Burton showing the first known ash emission of the March 2009 eruption of Redoubt Volcano. The activity shown in the sequence took place on 15 March 2009, and the full-scale eruption began one week later. There is a helpful and informative caption with the images, but it’s very sad to see a reputable academic site linking not once but twice to articles at a popular and laughable user-edited internet encyclopedia rather than taking the trouble to find and refer to proper sources. This kind of thing should not be encouraged: the internet is dumb enough already.
[H/T: Callan Bentley, NOVA Geoblog.]
Sparks fly in Sakura-jima eruption 11 February 2010
Posted by admin in eruptions, Japan, Sakura-jima.Tags: Japan, Sakura-jima, volcanic eruptions, volcanic lightning, volcano images
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Here’s some serious volcanic lightning. As reported in this week’s SI/USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report, Sakura-jima volcano in southern Japan – always highly-active – erupted spectacularly on 8 February, producing lava fountaining up to 1 km in height, showering its flanks with incandescent material, and throwing up a very dense ash plume positively pulsating with lightning. There’s a great video at Kago-net showing all this activity, and I can’t resist showcasing some captures from that video here.
(There has been some interesting research on volcanic lightning recently, occasioned by Redoubt’s 2009 eruption. See Eruptions for background and links, and this article from National Geographic News.)
Soufrière Hills: spectacular images at Stromboli Online 9 February 2010
Posted by admin in Caribbean, Soufrière Hills, volcano images.Tags: Caribbean, Montserrat, Soufrière Hills, volcano images
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Over at the wonderful volcanism site Stromboli Online there is extensive photo documentation of recent activity at Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat. The images, which show ash venting, pyroclastic flows, rockfalls and more at Soufrière Hills, form a spectacular and informative visual record of one of the most dramatic and interesting of current eruptions.
Stromboli Online: Soufrière Hills
UPDATE. More sensational Soufrière Hills imagery – our friends at Activolcans have posted a comment below recommending Thorsten Boeckel’s site, where there are more great photographs of activity on Montserrat (and elsewhere).
For all our Soufrière Hills coverage: Soufrière Hills « The Volcanism Blog.
NASA Earth Observatory: Soufrière Hills valleys and debris deposits 8 January 2010
Posted by admin in Caribbean, NASA Earth Observatory, Soufrière Hills.Tags: Caribbean, Montserrat, NASA Earth Observatory, Soufrière Hills, volcano images
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Image of the day for 7 January 2010 at the NASA Earth Observatory is this view of Soufrière Hills volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, captured by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite on 29 December 2009.
The image clearly shows how the deposits from the debris flows radiating out from the summit of Soufrière Hills have descended the major drainage channels in the flanks of the volcano and filled them with volcanic deposits. North is to the right in this image; the prominent debris fan in the middle of the southern coast (on the left) is formed by volcanic material deposited by pyroclastic flows that have followed the channel of the White River Valley.
Soufriere Hills volcano resumes activity – NASA Earth Observatory, 7 January 2010
(To go off-topic for a moment, the NASA Earth Observatory image of the day for today is a Terra MODIS view of the green and pleasant land in which I happen to live.)
For all our Soufrière Hills coverage: Soufrière Hills « The Volcanism Blog.
Information
Global Volcanism Program: Soufrière Hills – information about Soufrière Hills volcano (1600-05=)
Montserrat Volcano Observatory – comprehensive news and information from the MVO
Volcanic eruptions seen from space, at Wired.com 24 August 2009
Posted by admin in volcano images.Tags: satellite imagery, volcano images
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Wired.com have a very nice new gallery up today: erupting volcanoes on Earth as seen from space. Ten superb images are featured, including Sarychev Peak in 2009, Redoubt in 2009, Etna in 2002, Chaitén in 2008 and Shiveluch in 2004 (above).
(The best selection of volcano images taken from space is of course available direct from source: NASA’s Earth Observatory and Gateway to Astronaut Photography of the Earth.)
Erupting volcanoes on Earth as seen from space – Wired.com, 24 August 2009
Manam at the NASA Earth Observatory 11 July 2009
Posted by admin in Manam, NASA Earth Observatory, natural hazards, Papua New Guinea.Tags: Manam, NASA Earth Observatory, natural hazards, Papua New Guinea, volcano images
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Image of the Day for 10 July 2009 is this view of Manam volcano in Papua New Guinea, captured on 28 June 2009 by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the NASA Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite:
Manam, an 1807-metre stratovolcano, is one of the most active volcanoes in Papua New Guinea. Prominent in this picture are the valleys that radiate from the volcano’s summit, which channel lava and pyroclastic flows towards the coast. There are two craters at the summit, of which the southernmost has been the most historically active, directing most of its eruptive products down the south-eastern valley (lower right in the NASA image). The undated picture below, from the Global Volcanism Program (the credit is to Wally Johnson, Australia Bureau of Mineral Resources) shows the south-eastern valley incised deeply into the vegetated lower flanks of the volcano:
The island may look small but more than 9000 people originally lived there. They were evacuated when the current eruption of the volcano began in October 2004 – for a very interesting article on the evacuation and its lingering consequences, see ‘The Social Ramifications of Volcanism’ at Dr Erik Klemetti’s Eruptions blog.
[NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 Team.]
Stunning Sarychev Peak picture from the NASA Earth Observatory 19 June 2009
Posted by admin in NASA Earth Observatory, Russia, Sarychev Peak, volcano images.Tags: NASA Earth Observatory, Russia, Sarychev Peak, satellite images, volcano images
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The people at the NASA Earth Observatory have been doing a wonderful job of covering the current eruption at Sarychev Peak in the Kuril Islands, but they have really excelled themselves with their latest image: this stunning astronaut photograph of the volcano taken from the International Space Station on 12 June 2009, at an early stage of this eruption. There’s so much of interest to talk about here: the dark ashy plume punching upwards through the atmosphere almost vertically (little shearing wind at this stage), the pileus or cap of white cloud atop the plume, the pyroclastic flows ringing the volcano’s peak, and the neat circle in the surrounding cloud that has been the focus of much discussion among commenters over at Eruptions. Mostly, though, one just wants to sit back and look at this picture and go ‘WOW’.
Here’s a detail taken from the large version of the image. The light-coloured pyroclastic flow descending the volcano’s flanks towards the bottom of the image is an absolute beauty:
The original (un-rotated and un-cropped) image can be found at the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of the Earth.
NASA Earth Observatory: Sarychev Peak eruption, Kuril Islands (18 June 2009)
[Date corrected to 12 June – got so excited over the image, I’d put July. Thanks, Martin!]
UPDATE: The image above is just one of thirty pictures of the eruption taken from the International Space Station. Boris Behncke has submitted a very helpful comment explaining how to get hold of all of them via the Gateway to Astronaut Photography: check out his comment below for the instructions.
FURTHER UPDATE (25 June 2009): This dramatic image has achieved very wide coverage across the media since the NASA Earth Observatory featured it, and the ‘circle in the clouds’ around the eruption column in particular has attracted a lot of comment and debate. At the original Earth Observatory page for the image an editorial comment has been added summarizing the different interpretations of this phenomenon (scroll down to ‘Editor’s note’) without coming down in favour of any particular explanation. Here at The Volcanism Blog we’ll have more to say about this image tomorrow next week (been very busy, sorry).
For all our Sarychev Peak coverage: Sarychev Peak « The Volcanism Blog.
Information
Global Volcanism Program: Sarychev Peak – summary information for Sarychev Peak (0900-24=)
Sakhalin Volcanic Eruption Response Team (SVERT) – organization monitoring Kuril volcanoes
SVERT status reports – current and archived alerts and status reports
More pictures from Chaitén 13 May 2009
Posted by admin in Chaitén, Chile, eruptions, volcano images.Tags: Chaitén, Chile, Karen Dionne, South America, volcanic eruptions, volcano images
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The novelist Karen Dionne has recently been in Chaitén, where she has been researching her new novel Boiling Point (she has a blog here about her time in Chaitén, including many images and videos). Karen was kind enough to send The Volcanism Blog the following pictures, giving a vivid impression of what it’s like to get close to the volcano. Karen’s guide on this trip was Nicolas La Penna, who has himself provided us with some wonderful Chaitén images in the past. These pictures were taken on 26 April 2009.
You can read more about Karen Dionne’s time in Chaitén, and see some affecting images of the abandoned town, in an article she has written for The Huffington Post: ‘Chaitén volcano – one year later’.
For all our Chaitén coverage: Chaitén « The Volcanism Blog.
Information
Global Volcanism Program: Chaitén – summary information for Chaitén (1508-41)
SERNAGEOMIN – Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería (Spanish)
Erupción del Volcán Chaitén – extensive coverage of the Chaitén eruption
The Volcanism Blog 