By Nick
Last week there was an amusing situation where some data was suggesting Pavlof’s volcano was about to erupt (seismometers), and then was erupting (thermal imaging), but people on the ground couldn’t confirm it, because, as the volcano is in Alaska and it was a bit cloudy. It cleared up a bit and the eruption was confirmed. Well, the folks on the International Space Station have produced some stunning shots (via Slate.com) of Pavlof’s volcano erupting and the plume spreading for 100s of kms.
Volcano observation from the ISS is actually a very handy tool, as most remote sensing satellites work only in a top down approach. The ability to have a human able to recognise something and look at it from side-on is still quite powerful!
Here’s to that great combination of stunning and deadly.
Note the Slate website have been stealing my obviously original jokes. :p
