Gallery | Volcanoes from Space 2 | Go with the (new) flow

Bagana volcano is in a very remote part of Papua New Gunea. Located far from towns and cities. While it may hide from human eyes, it can't from our robotic ones: the Earth-Observing-1 satellite caught Bagana erupting in May 2012. The dark brown lava flow to the upper right occurred sometime after March 2011. It's so new there hasn't been time for vegetation to grow on it, even in that tropical climate. The volcano is very active; you can see several older flows that are tinged grren with plant life. Satellites are critical for observing and understanding volcanic activity, especially in hard-to-reach locations.

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

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