Comments on: Volcano in taupe

By: Guillermo Abramson

Guillermo Abramson — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:52:41 +0000

@Trebuchet: There is no lake at the Puyehue crater. There is also no ice or snow in the picture. Both the clear and the dark covers are pumice of different composition.

There were two materials since the beginning of the eruption. The dark one was magnetic (see here). It was much darker than the light brown seen in this image. I’m not sure if it is the same.

The dark material flowing to the west of the erupting vent is a lava flow (probably covered in ash, also).

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:45:38 +0000

“Unlike Earth observing satellites, which point straight down”

Although many pushbroom imagers point to the nadir, some have wide swaths and do look at the surface from an oblique angle. Many earth observing instruments are limb sounders. The imagers on geostationary satellites see more or less an entire hemisphere so they see quite a large area of the earth at oblique angles. Dem danged instruments aren’t all alike.

By: Stuartg

Stuartg — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:54:40 +0000

I misread the title as “Volcano in Taupo.”

I had a little disappointment when I realised my mistake, since Taupo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taupo_Volcano) is an incredible volcano and it would have been lovely to view it from orbit, but the spectacular photos of other volcanos more than countered the disappointment!

By: Dragonchild

Dragonchild — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:52:11 +0000

BU-UU-UR-RRP!!

By: Video of the lunar far side from GRAIL/Ebb | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine » Effin' Uckin' Epic

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 01:44:24 +0000

[...] Volcano in taupe [...]

By: chief

chief — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:30:35 +0000

That “fine” ash is why the flights are rerouted or canceled. An engine gulping that sandpaper mix will either seize up or choke from lack of combustion space.

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:23:23 +0000

To save the poor suffering forest from this completely natural phenomenon we should form a committee from NASA, NOAA, and BINT to study ways to prevent the ash from falling on the trees. Shouldn’t cost more than a $1 billion or so to study the problem.

By: DennyMo

DennyMo — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:07:46 +0000

Similar to Andrew’s comment, many of the smaller lakes in the NE corner of the map are just as brown as the ground around them, not much contrast. Although the large lake showing how the sediment is “delta-ing” out where the creeks dump into it is very interesting.

By: David

David — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:56:20 +0000

Left of the volcano you can already see mud flows that have happened… massive ones….

By: Lorena

Lorena — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:52:03 +0000

terrible, lots of animals died, tourism was ruined in cities like bariloche that live off tourism, lots of people are moving away, flights from buenos aires even are getting cancelled every other day, well, it’s a bother, I live 25km from buenos aires and some days, I get a fine film of volcanic ash in my house :S but, well, it’s mother nature right, not her fault.