Posted on 06/22/2009 9:04:14 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
An amazing new picture from space reveals a volcanic eruption in its earliest stage, with a huge plume of ash and steam billowing skyward and creating a shock wave in the atmosphere.
Sarychev Peak on Matua Island is one of the most active volcanoes in the Kuril Island chain, northeast of Japan.
The new photo was taken June 12 from the International Space Station. NASA says volcano researchers are excited about the picture "because it captures several phenomena that occur during the earliest stages of an explosive volcanic eruption."
The main plume appears to be a combination of brown ash and white steam, according to a NASA statement. The vigorously rising plume gives the steam a bubble-like appearance
The surrounding atmosphere has been shoved up by the shock wave of the eruption, scientists said.
Volcano plumes are so chaotic that they produce lightning, as revealed in pictures for the first time earlier this year.
The smooth white cloud on top may be water condensation that resulted from rapid rising and cooling of the air mass above the ash column. This cloud is probably a transient feature, scientists say, with the eruption plume is starting to punch through. The cloud casts a dark shadow to the northwest of the island.
Often, winds high in the atmosphere sheer a volcano's plume and flatten it out. That didn't happen with this one.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Guess you wouldn’t want to be flying through that
Fascinating photo. Interesting that they are calling it a shockwave. I would’ve guessed it was some kind of thermal effect.
bttt
I wouldn’t think it would be moving fast enough to cause a shockwave either, but look at what the eruption did to the clouds! It pushed them away from the island in a perfect circle like a ripple in a pond. Amazing.
}:-)4
Cool pic if of one of mother nature’s little carbon footprints.
An amazing photo.
Maybe cap them, sell those credits to another moron like yourself?
I would too, but as I think about it, if the wave moving outward consists of an area of higher pressure, it will also be at a higher temperature. The volume hasn’t changed, so if the pressure goes up, the temperature will too. Boyle’s Law, I believe.
A little bit of both. Water mixed in with magma under extreme pressure, upon eruption flashes into steam and expands explosively. As the ball of steam expands, it's temperature falls, until it finally reaches a point where the steam condenses into fog.
I thought you might like this.
Great photo. I wonder whose girlfriend blew up when her guy came home smelling of booze?
PV=NrT...not just a good idea, it’s the LAW!
or something like that.
I would have liked to have seen what a photo of Mt. St. Helens looked like from space on May 18, 1980... :-)
There is evidence that Mt. St. Helens “punched up in the sky” — initially — on that eruption (after it changed from the horizontal to the vertical, that is), because of an isolated ash-fall in and around the Tulsa, Oklahoma area, from that eruption. That’s a circle of ash, all by itself, centered roughly on Tulsa, Oklahoma, while the main area of ash went to the north and east....
After the eruption “settled down” (so to speak) it continued in its ferocity for the next nine hours, continuously and without interruption...
bump
Yeah me too. Even explosive ejecta that high up aren’t likely to travelling supersonic -— not even transsonic
Not the first mushroom cloud over japan...
After much consideration, former Vice-Pres Gore will suggest....
drumrolls, please.....
a gas-catching shield made up of charcoal trapped between two layers of cloth, ala the fart-filtering underpants than can be bought that filter out the smell of gaseous emissions of human beings. He’ll also think that all humans should be made to wear these fart filters, and all animals be fitted out with them.
Anyway, he’ll tell us that a large enough layer of charcoal will contain the carbon emissons. The media will pick up on this, and debate it earnestly, then they will figure out that the outrageously hot temps in the volcano will melt the charcoal and whatever is holding it in place, and quietly will drop the issue and never bring it up again.
Just wait and see.
NUKE BERKELEY
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