A lot of you may have already seen this, but a 1200 meter volcano called Chaiten in Chile erupted the other day, blowing smoke and ash kilometers into the sky. It also sparked massive lightning, and the images are incredible:
There are quite a few amazing pictures of the event on Flickr. There is also this astonishing video on YouTube:
This is the first eruption of Chaiten in almost 9400 years. Small towns nearby have been evacuated, and I haven’t heard reports of anyone getting hurt.
I rather hope we get some images of the eruption taken from the space station. They tend to be rather dramatic.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:12 am
pic from spave
http://www.flickr.com/photos/floro/2475401414/
amazing
May 9th, 2008 at 11:12 am
“A Pillar of Winds” as the background music.
Nice.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Landsat 7 is scheduled to fly over it on the 17th. The imager isn’t what it used to be, but something interesting should come from the opportunity.
Nice Shot, Steve G, though L7 will have a better resolution. I’ll let this list know…
May 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I’m glad that you didn’t accidentally mix up the headlines and post “Large Hadron Collider Comes Online”.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Cool video!!!
TAnks!
GAry 7
May 9th, 2008 at 11:41 am
I was hoping there’d be a higher-resolution version of the top pic… 500x just isn’t going to cut it for my new wallpaper! Bah!
May 9th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Wait a second here… isn’t that Jesus appearing in the sky?
Look closer at the cloud of dust near the back, it’s clearly a bearded dude in a robe whisking up the forces of nature for his own divine purposes.
It’s not a volcano… IT’S THE RAPTURE!!!
May 9th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Actually that volcanic cloud looks remarkably like – a leg wound!
May 9th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Autumn,
I believe the music is “One if These Days” by Pink Floyd off the Meddle album (1971)
May 9th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
darnit! They need to release a bigger resolution of that picture. I need it as a wallpaper!!
I love volcanos. They’re my big 2nd interest.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
At the Universe Today website, someone posted this link
http://galacticcentral.org/imagebucket/volcano.jpg
where is a 2996 x 2000 version of the first image
May 9th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Amazing. I didn’t know that a volcanic cloud could cause such lightning. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it certainly looks apocalyptic.
@Michelle:
I found this image from the Fark thread:
http://www.tflive.com/images/we_are_almost_there_mr_frodo.jpg
May 9th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
bonjour pour tous je veux bien vous envoyez des theoriques mais je veux une confirmation jai bien envoyé plusieures théoriques mais sans avoir aucun aide veuillez noté mon nom sur google.com et vous allez avoir tous les conséquences merci de votre attention morad genie
May 9th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
HOLY CRAP!
May 9th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
God was really slacking off when he packed up after only six days construction. The quality of his workmanship is really disappointing. Tut tut, cracks everywhere, stuff leaking out….. shoddy.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Man, that brings back the memories. Sunday, May 18th, 1980. Ellensburg, Washington – 40 miles east of Mt. St. Helens. I awoke Sunday morning to find the sky pitch black. I went outside and the smell of sulfur was in the air. Small ash particles floated everywhere like snow. From that distance we didn’t hear the initial boom of the explosion at 8:30 a.m. but by 10:00 a.m. it was pitch black and would remain so for the rest of the day.
57 people died that day. I remember the newspapers at the time published a picture of a dead boy lying in the back of a pickup truck. He was covered with ash. That one always haunted me for years and years. I always wondered what his name was, what his dreams were, and what he might have been if he had lived. Funny how things stay with you like that after 28 years. It will be the 28th anniversary of that event in exactly 9 days.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Tom — I can imagine that would stick with you. I have a similar memory of a tornado that came through my neighborhood May 5th 1989. I remember it like it was last week. Much devastation. It could have been much worse, though. Volcano eruptions don’t just devastate, they destroy everything in their path.
That top picture is impressive, indeed. And it is now my wallpaper, thanks to Kytshar for linking to a higher res one.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Since it’s been way too long since you have mentioned pareidolia (one whole day), did you notice the divine Ganesha, come to remove all obstacles between us and enlightenment?
Heh. Christians are the only ones with imaginations…
May 9th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
“Ellensburg, Washington – 40 miles east of Mt. St. Helens.”
Correction. I just did a little calculation. We were 95 miles from the volcano at a bearing of 55 degrees so approximately northeast. The wind direction was approximately towards the east which is why towns on the east side got coated with a lot of ash. I think we got 3-4 inches of it. If we had only been 40 miles away we probably would have heard the explosion.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Thanks, this is the first time I’ve heard about it.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
One does not simply walk into Mordor…
May 9th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
That IS awesome. I blogged about it here:
Geology, Wizardry, Astronomy, Obamanation
What amazing pictures.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
[...] Bad Astronomy Blog » Volcano erupts in Chile Chaiten pics! The shot with lightning is [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Holy crap, I think they used freakin’ Zombi for the background music in that video! ZOMBI!
May 9th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
One of these days Chaiten is going to cut you into little pieces!
May 9th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
> Brangoon
C’mon, dude. It’s OBVIOUSLY bin Laden …..
May 9th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Best. Eruption. Ever.
May 10th, 2008 at 4:36 am
“This is the first eruption of Chaiten in almost 9400 years.”
Must be global warming.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:24 am
This is the first I’m hearing about it, too. On an astronomy blog. There’s something to be said about news reporting in America…
Amazing pics of Chaiten. The raw power of the earth ‘venting’ itself into the sky never fails to stun me.
Tom, I remember that picture of the boy in the pickup after all these years, and I lived in Wisconsin at the time of the eruption, very far removed from the devastation of Mt St Helens. One of the other ‘human scale’ images from that event is that of a station wagon partially crushed by fallen trees and buried in ash, several miles away from (but in the path of) the blast. I don’t recall whether or not the car’s occupant(s) survived.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:51 am
It’s nowhere near Cerro Paranal / The Large Binocular Telescope / Gemini South I hope – is it?
No harm to astronomers or ash cloud risk to the many fine telescopes there is there?
Or am I getting my places / names mixed up?
Is the eruption large enough to effect the climate & cause a drop in global temperatures as Mt Pinatubo (?) / Mt St Helens / Krakatoa did by any chance? Anyone got any ideas / guesstimations on that (cold weather change) front?
Cool pics anyway BA. THX
I remember hearing & reading about Mt St Helens -from a very safe distance away in Australia – would love to visit the site if I ever get the chance ..
May 10th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Nah, bin Laden’s already dead. Died a few years ago of typhus -that’s if his failing kidney held up that long or he wasn’t flattened into the rocky mush of Tora Bora shortly after the US first bombed Afghanistan from the stone age it was already in back further to an even more miserable stone age.
Whatever has actually killed him, I’m pretty sure than bin Laden’s been dead a long time now – but of course we’re not officially told so that there remains that feeble skerrick of an excuse to continue to wage America’s War of Terror and keep you all paranoid and easily controlled ..
bin laden is a classic convenient Goldstein-type hate figure (read Orwell’s novel ‘1984′ there) exploited as the caricature Black hat for propaganda purposes. Shame too many of the American population keeps falling for it ..
—–
The videos? Gee .. how hard to fake are they – not! Was he a real figure – sure. Was he really as bad as some wish to beleive, some sort of menacing Muslim super-villain? Course he blinking well wasn’t!
May 10th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Even assuming he’s still alive as some think – & as that renowned truth-teller (hahahaahaha .. sob!) George Bush the lesser claims -
lets consider what bin Laden / Al Quaeda has been able to do lately in theway of actually attacking America … Hmm .. lets see that’s right – NOTHING!
(The people fighting you in Iraq? Those’d be the Iraqis & their attacking you just ‘coz you’ve invaded them! The folks in Afghanistan? Well, that’s the Taliban & guess what -once again (like with the VietCong) while there may be some ideology involved really the main reason why they’re fighting there is because its actually their home !)
If you compare the damages objectively for a second – and, yes, I know that’s hard in your climate – then AQ has knocked over two skyscrapers & killed about 3,000 people Vs theUS having bombed, invaded and occupied two entire nations murdering hundreds of thousands (at min.) of innocent children, men & women in the process. I’d say any half reasonable observer would now say you’ve gone wa-aay too far & done vastly disproportionate harm as oppsoed to wnhat ’s been done unto you.
Time to call ‘enough’, to leave other nations the hell alone & to apologise to the rest of the world for the enormous amount of damage and slaughter that you’ve done so far. Not that there’s any chance of Presiking Bush the Mad & his Neo-Con puppeteers doing anything so sane and brave as that ..
——————————————————–
” ..the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. We [the USA] are only 6% of the World’s population – we cannot impose our will upon the other 94% of mankind.”
- John F. Kennedy. (Quoted by Phillip Adams, Page 11, ‘Weekend Australian’ magazine. Dec. 13-14, 2003.)
Quote from President Eisenhower (quoted in ’The Guardian weekly’, 2005 Jan 28th – Feb. 3rd .) : “We cannot consider that the armed invasion and occupation of another country are peaceful or proper means to achieve justice and conformity with international law.”
“There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies against despots – suspicion.”
- Demosthenes, Phillipics-2. [Collins Concise Dictionary of Quotations, P.108.]
“Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate.”
‘Since it is impossible to coerce thought, the way to social harmony is to discuss conflict and pursue truth; the more people speak their minds freely, the more they are likely to be loyal citizens.’
– Jewish Dutch 17th C philosopher, B. Spinoza.
- Col. Charles Stuart during the American War of Independence, 1778.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:55 am
“Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate.”
- Col. Charles Stuart during the American War of Independence, 1778.
______________________________
CORRECTION from above post.
Sorry if this offends people – but sometimes the truth does hurt.
The USA is NOT the good guy here.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:06 am
… & the Bad Guy here is really that small group of extremist pro-Isreali Jewish & XN Neo-con fundamentalists who have for too long hijacked your nation’s foreign policy.
This is NOT “conspiracy theory” but just the stark truth recognised by people even at opposite ends of your political spectrum from Pat Buchanan through to Noam Chomsky.
Remove the malign “Israel uber alles” neo-conservative lunatics from power & stop funding and arming Israel – insist it makes peace on just terms with the Palestineans and its Muslim neighbours or gets evacuated from the Islamic world region to Europe or theUSA instaed -where, really it belongs & half the current Islamic world – Western world conflict ends almost instantly. Stop demonising and patronising and bullying the SW Asian / Muslim nations and planet generally and become a good global citizen & the other half is mostly gone too. Its not that hard if you actually think …
May 10th, 2008 at 9:07 am
… but, of course, it seems you never do ..
May 10th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Umm… Guys? Maybe flying about next to an ash plume *might* not be the best idea…
Great video, though.
Thanks Kytshar for the hi-res link!
(I think Steve G is correct, it is Pink Floyd for the background music.)
May 11th, 2008 at 10:21 am
@StevoR:
Well, given that the LBT is on Arizona, I would say it’s completely safe from the Chaiten Volcano rage…
But talking about the other telescopes located in Chile, most of them are located some 1500 kms north of the volcano. That number goes for Gemini South, Cerro Tololo (CTIO), Las Campanas and La Silla.
Paranal (VLT) is more than 2100 kms north of Chaiten.
So, nothing to worry. I’m writing this from Paranal, by the way…
May 11th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Tom> C’mon, dude. It’s OBVIOUSLY bin Laden …..
Oh don’t even joke about that… Bush will send the remaining US forces directly into the volcano!!!
May 12th, 2008 at 4:29 am
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May 12th, 2008 at 11:35 am
“Tom, I remember that picture of the boy in the pickup after all these years”
I can’t seem to find a URL containing the actual news photo on the Internet. But I did find a good story explaining who the boy was and how he got there. The boy was named Andy Karr and he was 11 years old on May 18th, 1980. His dad decided to take him and his brother Mike, age 9, on a camping trip to Mt. St. Helens. So they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Talk about stupid parental decision making – taking your two boys on a camping trip to within 4 miles of a summit of a volcano that has been smoking and belching forth steam for several weeks. Just plain dumb – I get mad just thinking about that jackass father.
http://www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5457
On Saturday May 17, Day Karr, age 37, took his two sons, Day Andrew and Michael Murray, for a weekend camping trip to Mount St. Helens. Day Karr, co-owner of a Seattle produce wholesaler called Sound Produce (1932 Occidental Ave S), lived at 3219 SW Point Place in Seattle. Andy, age 11, and Mike, age 9, lived with their mother, Barbara Karr, at 19025 SE Jones Road in Maple Valley. Day Karr and his boys enjoyed camping and they headed to one of their favorite campsites located 4 to 4 ½ miles northwest of Mt. St. Helens. Barbara Karr said, “They had camped there often before … I knew he was hoping to get some more pictures of the mountain. The boys were along because they loved to go camping with their father” (Post-Intelligencer June 15, 1980).
On a recent visit Day Karr had taken a photo of Mount St. Helens which he sold to a national wire service, and he was returning to the mountain hoping to get some more good shots. On the morning of May 18 the Karrs had gotten up early and were in their pickup truck when the mountain erupted.
The Volcano Erupts
As the northern top of the mountain started sliding to the north, the pressure of the rising magma inside the mountain was released. Several events happened almost simultaneously:
Sound and shock waves shot straight up towards the heavens.
At 660 degrees F., hot gases and pulverized pieces of the mountain were blasted to the north and swept along the ground at speeds of at least 300 mph. Within about a minute of the eruption, the Karr pickup truck was overwhelmed and its three occupants were killed. The lateral blast was so powerful that all trees and vegetation in a six mile radius to the north of Mount St. Helens, including where the Karrs were, vaporized.
In less than five minutes after the eruption, the seething blast continued out 18 to 23 miles from the mountain, killing nearly all vegetation. Trees, mainly Douglas Firs, some 200 feet high, were stripped of branches and bark and blown down like toothpicks. Some old growth trees were picked up, roots and all, and thrown over a ridge 1,500 feet high.
The top of the mountain, composed of rock debris, snow, and ice, rushed down the mountain at speeds up to 200 mph and over a portion of the lateral blast area. Most of the debris landslide flowed to the northwest following the North Fork of the Toutle River. In 10 minutes it had traveled 13 ½ miles. The mountain avalanche covered a 24 square mile area to an average thickness of 150 feet — in some places it was 600 feet thick. In moments Mount St. Helens dropped from being the fifth highest mountain in Washington at 9,677 feet to being the 30th highest peak at 8,364 feet. The south side of the mountain lost 1,313 feet in elevation and the north side lost about 2,900 feet. The volcano left a crater more than a square mile wide, about the size of Seattle’s downtown business area.
.
.
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Tragically, Day Karr’s hope of a photograph that could be sold nationally was realized when a photographer from the San Jose Mercury took a photograph of the Karr pickup truck showing the body of one of the children in the back of the truck.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Nature = teh ultimate pwn.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Good to hear. Thanks.
My grasp of South American geography is, I’ll admit a bit hazy .. I knew we had quite a few big scopes there (hmm.. felt sure the LBT was one of them… anyway, ‘parently not.) but wasn’t at all sure where.
Cheers for that & best wishes -hope the volcanic ash plume doesn’t drift your way at all – & hope it does cool the Earth off a little and thus cancels out some global warming for us.
May 17th, 2008 at 10:24 am
bonjour je veux bien envoyé d’autres théoriques mais je veux de l’argent pour fair envoyé environ 5 mille dollard pas de plus et je veux une confirmation
September 26th, 2008 at 8:11 am
bonjour pour tous la raison de la raison j’ai arrétez de envoyez mes théoriques à condition que je n’ai pas recu aucun aide si vous voulez le mieux vous devez me envoyez un message sur windows-live mor-23b@hotmail.com que je suis à votre réponse merci