Pictures of Kuril Islands Volcano From ISS

KindMind writes "The Daily Mail has cool pictures of the Sarychev Peak (Kuril Islands) volcano eruption taken from the ISS back on June 12. From the article: 'A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere. Sarychev Peak, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, had been sitting quietly in the Kuril Island chain near Japan for 20 years, when it suddenly sprang to life on June 12. Fortuitously, the International Space Station was flying overhead at the time, and managed to capture this spectacular image of the ash-cloud tearing through the atmosphere, sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle.'"

Comments

Original Source and Large Images

[eldavojohn]

The original NASA story is here with large desktop background sized images. If you don't visit the weekly top ten site, you really should. Some of those images are breathtaking. Check out the thunderstorm anvil over Africa.

Re:Original Source and Large Images

[squoozer]

Thanks for the link some of those pictures are amazing. Being a UKian I was quite interested in the picture of London at night (shame it's a little blurred). I downloaded the largest version of the image though (about 1.9mb) and noticed something strange. There are a surprisingly large number of green dots and a few blue dots. What I'm wondering is: are the green dots traffic lights and the blue emergency services?

I could maybe believe that the blue lights are emergency vehicles since they will typically have an uninterrupted path to the camera but traffic lights almost always have a cover which I would have thought would make them hard to spot from above. Perhaps they are just artefacts of low light photography. I'd be interested to know though.

What happens when you drop a penny from the ISS.

[Kenja]

Of course NASA will deny everything.

Overlord Recession

[RuBLed]

No! That is my previously secret volcanic lair exploding you insensitive clod.

Almost atomic

[timpdx]

Almost exactly what an atomic detonation would look like from space, even down to the clouds being pushed aside and the "pileus cloud" that you see above atomic blasts from years ago.

Either Mushroom Volcano Cloud Or...

[florescent_beige]

Could also be a picture of what happens when I try to talk to a woman in a bar.

Re:Yay greenhouse!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Well under a 10th of a percent of one, in all likelihood.

"Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually...the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes." (link to source, and so you can see that I didn't do anything sneaky with that elision

Re:Territorial dispute with Japan

[belmolis]

Not exactly. Japan claims only the "Southern Kuriles" that is, from Iturup (Japanese Etorofu) southward, as per the Japanese-Russian Treaty of 1855. The Soviet Union attacked Japan at the very end of WWII and occupied all of the Kuriles. Japan is clearly in the right in that the Soviet Union had no legal claim to the Southern Kuriles. Basically, the current Russian occupation was a gift of Japanese territory from Roosevelt and Churchill to Stalin. The island on which the volcano is located, Matua, is in the Northern Kuriles and is not claimed by Japan.

Re:It's OT but WOW

[pedestrian crossing]

Yes! I saw that as well, wasn't mentioned in the summary. This is the first time i've heard of a dark molecular cloud? So it blocks out all light from the stars behind it and somehow there are no stars in-front of it even though it's 500 LY away?

500 LY is our local neighborhood, galactically speaking, not even one quarter of the way across the arm of the galaxy's spiral that we are in. The map at the bottom of this page gives an idea of the scale of 500 LY. For comparison, let's look at the Orion nebula (middle "star" in Orion's sword). It is about 1200 LY away, and there aren't very many stars directly between us and it, even though it is about halfway across the arm that we are in.

"How they are formed is unknown, but clouds such as this are thought to be a birthing place for new stars."

I thought Nebulae were responsible for that?

Nebula are typically what's left over after a star dies, and yes can provide the matter for new star formation. But that isn't the only (or even main) mechanism. Anytime you have a large concentration of matter in space, gravity has a tendency to pull it together and form stars.

Re:Yay greenhouse!

[radtea]

So how many human civilizations' worth of CO2 and other emissions did that just kick out? ;-)

The comments on the original are to the same tune. What makes anyone think that volcanoes are a significant source of CO2? Where would the CO2 that volcanoes are supposed to emit come from?

Volcanoes do emit some C02, but then, they emit some of just about everything. Their climate effects are mostly reduced atmospheric heat content due to an increase in ash and aerosols in the upper atmosphere. This effect is particularly pronounced for tropical volcanoes because (surprise!) Earth gets most of its sunlight in the tropics, and while the ash/aerosol cloud does spread out over a few months timescale to all latitudes, its effect is greatest at the latitude of the volcano.

"Volcanoes emit far more CO2 than humans" is the equivalent of "Anthropogenic CO2 emissions increase the frequency and severity of hurricanes". The majority of people on both sides in the public debate on climate change have left the science far, far behind, and are happy to believe stuff that "just makes sense" to them.