Volcano: A View from Space

Phil Plaitt, on his Slate blog, "Bad Astronomy," has a view of a new volcano eruption taken from space which is awesome:

As Plaitt describes it, "The image above was taken by the Earth Observing-1 satellite on Dec. 22, 2012. You can see the main peak to the north (upper right); the crater at the top is obvious due to the shadow of the crater rim falling across it. The plume from the new eruption—a mixture of ash and steam—is blowing west toward the Pacific Ocean, and you can see the shadow of the plume on the flank of the main peak. In this picture fresh lava is black and older lava is gray, the latter having had enough time to cool and get a coating of snow. This type of eruption is called strombolian (after the Italian volcano); characterized by medium activity and small explosions, unlike other volcanoes that can explode catastrophically and cause widespread destruction like Mt. Vesuvius did."

The site also features up close video of the eruption and a link to a site embiggoning the pic. Cool!