[The Desktop Project is an excuse for me to clear all the way cool astronomical images I have siting on my computer desktop. I'm posting one every day until they run out, which will actually be pretty soon. I'm catching up!]

Volcano pictures taken from space are a favorite of mine. Satellites that take photos of the ground are generally designed to see straight down (toward the nadir, the opposite of the zenith), and these are always nifty. But there’s a special place in my heart for pictures taken by astronauts in the International Space Station, because unlike satellites, they can see off to the side. And there’s something about a shot of a volcano chugging away when seen from an angle…

Like this one! [Click to haphaestenate.]

That’s Pagan Island, part of the Mariana Islands. This island chain is a series of volcanoes formed at the seam of two tectonic plates, where one plate is being pushed down under another (and forms the Mariana trench). Pagan is actually two volcanoes; the other is across the isthmus from the one that’s erupting. The active volcano in this pictures is about 570 meters (about 1/3 mile) high and 7 km (4 miles) across.

The space station was hundreds of kilometers south of the volcano when the astronaut snapped this picture, which is why we have an oblique view of the eruption. The island is uninhabited; an eruption in 1981 forced the evacuation of the small population that lives there. Since then it’s been fairly active, though nothing as big as the 1981 event. [UPDATE: I've been informed that there actually are a handful of people on the island; some Chamorros are still there, living off the land. I have to wonder -- given the small size of the island, its volcanic activity, and the small number of people who must be there -- if this is a good idea in the long run.]

This plume looks white, so it’s probably mostly water vapor as opposed to ash. I’ll note that since no one is on the island anymore, one of the only ways to monitor this volcano is by satellite imagery like this. And personally, I think it’s a Very Good Idea that we keep an eye on our active planet.

Image credit: NASA

[Over the past few weeks, I've collected a metric ton of cool pictures to post, but somehow have never gotten around to actually posting them. Sometimes I was too busy, sometimes too lazy, sometimes they just fell by the wayside... but I decided my computer's desktop was getting cluttered, and I'll never clean it up without some sort of incentive. I've therefore made a pact with myself to post one of the pictures with an abbreviated description every day until they're gone, thus cleaning up my desktop, showing you neat and/or beautiful pictures, and making me feel better about my work habits. Enjoy.]

I imagine it gets pretty cold in the Russian Kamchatka peninsula in winter. Even an active volcano belching out steam might not be able to help much… but it sure looks pretty cool!

That’s the Kizimen volcano, which has been erupting since late 2010. This picture was taken by the Earth Observing-1 satellite in December of 2011. As you can see, snow is abundant, except where ash has fallen and shaded the ground brown. The plume is steam, but that must freeze pretty quickly once it hits that frigid air.

Even so, thermal imagery of the site shows fresh lava on the ground is still heating the place up. But, I’m guessing given the rest of this picture, not very much!

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data

[Over the past few weeks, I've collected a metric ton of cool pictures to post, but somehow have never gotten around to actually posting them. Sometimes I was too busy, sometimes too lazy, sometimes they just fell by the wayside... but I decided my computer's desktop was getting cluttered, and I'll never clean it up without some sort of incentive. I've therefore made a pact with myself to post one of the pictures with an abbreviated description every day until they're gone, thus cleaning up my desktop, showing you neat and/or beautiful pictures, and making me feel better about my work habits. Enjoy.]

It probably won’t surprise you to hear I’m not exactly a Biblical literalist. Still, parts of the Bible are known to be based on actual events, so when something turns up that sounds like one of the stories come true, it’s not always surprising.

Still, I always figured the parting of the Red Sea was wholly fictional. But now something has turned up hat makes me wonder if it could’ve sparked — literally — the legend: a volcano has poked its head up from above the waters of the Red Sea.

Here’s the scene on October 24, 2007, as seen by the Earth Observing-1 satellite:

[Click to enhaphaestenate.]

That all looks pretty normal. Calm seas, a couple of islands (Haycock Island to the north (left), and Rugged Island to the south, both about a kilometer long), no biggie.

Now take a look at the same scene on December 23, 2011:

[Click to Cecilbdemillenate.]

Holy smoke! Look at that: a whole new volcano! This is happening off the coast of Yemen near a group of islands called the Zubair Group. This region is in a rift zone, where two tectonic plates are pulling apart, so volcanic activity isn’t too surprising.

And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if something like this were the genesis^* of the story from Exodus. A big eruption could cause big waves, flooding, disasters on a smallish scale… and over time the story grew, had bits added to it, and next thing you know there’s an overwrought movie with Charlton Heston yelling at the water and shaking a stick at it.

To me, the story of science is always better than the ones we humans make up or embellish, though. Look at that: a brand new volcano, born right before our eyes, and all courtesy of space travel, satellites, good detectors, and a burning, unending desire to understand the world better.

There’s a revelation for you.

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 team.

^*HAHAHAHAHAHA! I kill me.

[Over the past few weeks, I've collected a metric ton of cool pictures to post, but somehow have never gotten around to actually posting them. Sometimes I was too busy, sometimes too lazy, sometimes they just fell by the wayside... but I decided my computer's desktop was getting cluttered, and I'll never clean it up without some sort of incentive. I've therefore made a pact with myself to post one of the pictures with an abbreviated description every day until they're gone, thus cleaning up my desktop, showing you neat and/or beautiful pictures, and making me feel better about my work habits. Enjoy.]

I love pictures of volcanoes taken from Earth-observing satellites. I’ve posted lots of ‘em, but I don’t think I’ve seen one quite like this:

That is an underwater volcano that’s been erupting since October of 2011. This picture, taken by the Earth Observing-1 satellite on February 10, 2012, shows the result. The teal water is sea water mixed with volcanic material swept around by the current. This volcano is located just offshore of El Hierro, the southwestern most of the volcanic Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco.

In case you were thinking those colors aren’t real, then take a look at this footage shot from a helicopter circling the volcano.

Yeah, those colors are real. Wow.

As you might expect, the volcano is growing. The peak is 210 meters (690 feet) above the sea floor, but only about 120 meters (390 feet) below the ocean surface. In one month it rose 10 meters! If it keeps erupting like this, then it won’t be too much longer before maps of the Canary Islands will have to be appened…

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data

I am endlessly fascinated by volcanoes — their power, the science behind them, and of course their terrible beauty. I’ve stood on a few (though never an active one — but that’ll happen someday!) and they are among the most amazing geological features on our planet.

In the past few years, we’ve started getting incredible high-resolution pictures of volcanoes from space, and they never cease to amaze me. One I saw recently really got to me: the south Pacific volcano Tinakula, located over 2000 km northeast of Australia:

Ye. Gads. [Click to hephaestenate.]

This shot was taken by the Earth Observing-1 satellite, and shows the volcanic island in the ocean. The colors are stunning: the deep green of the vegetation on the volcanic slope, and the bizarre silvery color of the ocean. This image is actually natural color; the silver is due to the way the sunlight is reflecting and glinting off the choppy water.

Tinakula is sporadically active, and you can see the plume of steam (probably with some ash mixed in) blowing out. You can also see the shadows on the water; the sunlight is coming from the right.

This is a sparsely populated region, and observations of the volcano are pretty rare. But from space, everything on the surface of the Earth is visible at some point. And while you can’t keep a constant eye on such things, even the occasional shot like this helps scientists understand what’s going on below the surface. This helps us understand volcanoes, of course, but also adds to the knowledge database of geologists, vulcanologists, and seismologists. And given the number of people who live near active volcanoes, this knowledge saves lives. It really is that simple: the better we understand the world — the Universe — around us, the better off we are.

Image credit: NASA/Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon (Earth Observatory)

I love these satellite views of volcanoes from space, and I’ve collected quite a few into a gallery slideshow. Click the thumbnail picture to get a bigger picture and more information, and scroll through the gallery using the left and right arrows.]

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NASA’s Earth Observatory site just put up this amazing picture. I have to say, this is one of the cooler pictures from the International Space Station that I’ve seen. Not for it’s beauty or anything like that — though it is starkly lovely — but because of what it shows:

[Click to dicraternate.]

Obviously, that’s a volcano on the right: Emi Koussi, in northern Africa. But look to the left, almost at the edge of the picture. See that faded ring? That’s Aorounga — an impact crater, some 10 – 15 km wide, formed when a chunk of cosmic debris hit the Earth about 300 million years ago! So these are two craters, one formed from processes happening deep below the Earth, and one from events from far above. Yet both can be seen at the same time, from one vantage point: orbiting our planet somewhere above the surface but beneath the rest of the Universe.

Image credit: NASA

The Moon is packed with all sorts of interesting features that only come to light — literally, in some cases — when very high-resolution imaging is done. For example, the lunar far side has a bunch of small volcanoes, some only a few hundred meters across, like this one:

[Click to enlunenate.]

The image is about 500 meters across, so this is a hill you could climb pretty easily, even though the low Sun angle implies the slope is greater than 13° (remember, the Moon has 1/6th the Earth’s gravity so that would be a pretty easy hike). Those boulders on the top are weird; they only appear to be on one side, and there doesn’t seem to be anything in that direction that would be a source of them. There are none on the plains around it, or at the bottom of a nearby crater, either. The source must be the volcano itself, I’d wager. Note the crater at the top of the mound, too – you might think that’s the volcanic vent, but in fact it’s not centered on the dome, indicating it’s a coincidental impact crater.

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