To the updates!
Batu Tara volcano in Indonesia. The volcano is currently producing small ash plumes.
- I was distracted enough by trying to figure out a way to teach about Miller Indices that I plum forgot to post this week's USGS/SI Weekly Volcanic Activity Report. It was a fairly quiet week so you didn't miss much. Enjoy it at your leisure.
- Rabaul must be positioned on the globe in such a way that NASA's Aqua satellite always gets a good shot at it. The Earth Observatory posted a new image of the plume from Rabaul and it looks thicker and more ash-laden than the image posted a few weeks ago. What this says about any potential future activity at Tavurvur crater at Rabaul is unclear, but it does show that the volcano is on a constant "simmer" right now.
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I missed the weekly report last week (sorry), but here is the new USGS/SI volcano activity report.
Highlights include:
Shiveluch in Kamchatka is still erupting away, producing ~7 km / 20,000 foot ash columns as the lava dome grows. There has also been pyroclastic flows spotted emanating from the…
This is likely my last update until the end of next week sometime, so feel free to use it for any new volcano news you might see. Look for the Erebus Volcano Profile to be posted on Friday sometime, followed by the vote for the next Profile. Next time I post I'll be (back) in the eastern time zone…
Busy today with scouting out some field location for the class I'll be teaching this fall. Here's this week's USGS/SI Weekly Volcano Report. The report is a little more eventful than last week's, so enjoy!
Kliuchevskoi Volcano in Kamchatka, taken summer of 2009 by Theresa Kayzar.
Highlights…
A wrap up of the week's volcanism, brought to you by Sally Kuhn Sennert and the USGS/SI Global Volcanism Program.
Highlights, not including Sarychev Peak, Redoubt and Shiveluch (busy week in the north Pacific), include:
A small ash cloud was spotted at Bagana in Papua New Guinea.
The Tavurvur cone…
Actually, at only 4 degrees from the equator, Rabaul is in the worst possible spot to be seen by polar-orbiting satellites. The orbits are furthest apart near the equator and closest together at high latitudes (in fact, both poles are imaged 16 times a day by each satellite). The instruments aboard Aqua and Terra each get a daylight shot at Rabaul about once every other day, but sometimes it is off to the side of the point under the satellite and is imaged at relatively low resolution.
I was hoping someone who knows more about the satellite's and their orbits would chime in. I suppose this means that Rabaul is just very photogenic to get into the NASA EO rolls so often ... not that I'm complaining.
If you're curious about orbits, read this: Catalog of Earth Satellite Orbits.
We feature Rabaul a lot because it's been so active lately, it's not always cloudy like it is in Patagonia, and the ash plume shows up well over the ocean.