Pictures of Kuril Islands Volcano From ISS 65
KindMind writes "The Daily Mail has cool pictures of the Sarychev Peak (Kuril Islands) volcano eruption taken from the ISS back on June 12. From the article: 'A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere. Sarychev Peak, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, had been sitting quietly in the Kuril Island chain near Japan for 20 years, when it suddenly sprang to life on June 12. Fortuitously, the International Space Station was flying overhead at the time, and managed to capture this spectacular image of the ash-cloud tearing through the atmosphere, sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle.'"
Location? (Score:1)
Not sure if Japan moved, or if Russia is trying to take over territory.
Disclaimer: I did not look for a map to find the location.
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Disclaimer: I did not look for a map to find the location.
Too bad there wasn't one two-fifth the way down the page.
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Russia already took it over, after WWII. OTOH, that is territory that Imperial Russia lost in the Russo-Japanese War, so it ends up a wash.
Cool pictures (Score:2)
Overlord Recession (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Overlord Recession (Score:4, Funny)
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Pfft. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Video or it didn't happen.
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Video, or I don't believe you exist ;)
Original Source and Large Images (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Original Source and Large Images (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for the link some of those pictures are amazing. Being a UKian I was quite interested in the picture of London at night [nasa.gov] (shame it's a little blurred). I downloaded the largest version of the image though (about 1.9mb) and noticed something strange. There are a surprisingly large number of green dots and a few blue dots. What I'm wondering is: are the green dots traffic lights and the blue emergency services?
I could maybe believe that the blue lights are emergency vehicles since they will typically have an uninterrupted path to the camera but traffic lights almost always have a cover which I would have thought would make them hard to spot from above. Perhaps they are just artefacts of low light photography. I'd be interested to know though.
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I hadn't considered lens flare as a cause but having said that it doesn't look like any lens flare I've ever seen. I was wondering if it might be a form of chromatic aberration although that normally seems to result in a blue / purple edge to items. I suspect the camera they are using in the IIS is somewhat special though and it could have a weakness that causes it to record very bright tiny white points as green (e.g. the point covers less than one whole pixel and preferentially activates green). Of course
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I recently took some long exposure night shots that had bright point-source lights in them with a Canon 70-300mm telephoto lens and got similar lens flares (greenish and lunate-shaped).
They might be Bokeh [wikipedia.org]. I'd never heard of them before. Also wikipedia says that Anti-reflactive coatings [wikipedia.org] can create strange effects, as you said.
In any case, I think they're artifacts and not actual 'stuff'. As for the blue ones - those might be the cops. 8-)
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Great weekly pictures. Thanks for the link.
What happens when you drop a penny from the ISS. (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes! I saw that as well, wasn't mentioned in the summary. This is the first time i've heard of a dark molecular cloud? So it blocks out all light from the stars behind it and somehow there are no stars in-front of it even though it's 500 LY away?
"How they are formed is unknown, but clouds such as this are thought to be a birthing place for new stars."
I thought Nebulae were responsible for that?
Re:It's OT but WOW (Score:5, Informative)
Yes! I saw that as well, wasn't mentioned in the summary. This is the first time i've heard of a dark molecular cloud? So it blocks out all light from the stars behind it and somehow there are no stars in-front of it even though it's 500 LY away?
500 LY is our local neighborhood, galactically speaking, not even one quarter of the way across the arm of the galaxy's spiral that we are in. The map at the bottom of this [wikipedia.org] page gives an idea of the scale of 500 LY. For comparison, let's look at the Orion nebula [wikipedia.org] (middle "star" in Orion's sword). It is about 1200 LY away, and there aren't very many stars directly between us and it, even though it is about halfway across the arm that we are in.
"How they are formed is unknown, but clouds such as this are thought to be a birthing place for new stars."
I thought Nebulae were responsible for that?
Nebula are typically what's left over after a star dies, and yes can provide the matter for new star formation. But that isn't the only (or even main) mechanism. Anytime you have a large concentration of matter in space, gravity has a tendency to pull it together and form stars [wikipedia.org].
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The part that amazes me is that I, as a human, simply can't comprehend the sheer volume of matter required to form a star. It has to have enough fuel to capable of fusion for billions of years to really be stable. I can calculate and write down the numbers and do the math... but I truly can't visualize in a non-abstract fashion how much matter that is.
Truly amazing.
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It's only half a light-year across. Given the distribution of stars near here, odds are it would have no more than one or two stars between here and there, and zero isn't terribly unlikely.
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So it blocks out all light from the stars behind it and somehow there are no stars in-front of it even though it's 500 LY away?
It doesn't block all the light from the stars behind it. If you look at the edges, you can see a lot of dim, reddish stars that are only somewhat blocked.
As someone else mentioned, it's only about 500 light years away and not very big. The density of stars in this part of the galaxy gives a good probability that there wouldn't be any foreground stars between us and the cloud.
BTW,
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Almost atomic (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool Pics (Score:2)
Territorial dispute with Japan (Score:1)
OutputLogic [outputlogic.com]
Re:Territorial dispute with Japan (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly. Japan claims only the "Southern Kuriles" that is, from Iturup (Japanese Etorofu) southward, as per the Japanese-Russian Treaty of 1855. The Soviet Union attacked Japan at the very end of WWII and occupied all of the Kuriles. Japan is clearly in the right in that the Soviet Union had no legal claim to the Southern Kuriles. Basically, the current Russian occupation was a gift of Japanese territory from Roosevelt and Churchill to Stalin. The island on which the volcano is located, Matua, is in the Northern Kuriles and is not claimed by Japan.
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My God... (Score:2)
Re:Yay greenhouse! (Score:5, Informative)
"Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually...the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes." [usgs.gov] (link to source, and so you can see that I didn't do anything sneaky with that elision
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The emergence of a global economy affects the demand for all resources. In turn, use of these natural resources is occurring on a scale that may modify the terrestrial, marine, and atmospheric environments upon which human civilization depends. The use of and competition for natural resources on the global scale, and natural threats to those resources, has the potential to impact the Nation's ability to sustain its economy, national security, quality of life, and natural env
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Because, on a per country basis, or a per energy-usage basis, let alone a per capita basis, China and India pollute far, far less than the US. Even if China and India tripled their pollution output, on a per-capita basis they would pollute only a small fraction of the amount of pollution per capita that the US would be spewing after conforming to the Kyoto requirements.
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Sigh. Yes. Because we (the industrialized countries) have already been at it for ~200 years, have created the great majority of the human-generated CO2 that is in the atmosphere currently, and, logically, we should be the ones to move first on solutions. Upon successfully meeting the initial goals, the plan was for India and China (among other countries) to be held to the same standard, because we can then say "See? It can be done." If we sit back and do nothing, then why shouldn't they proceed to do e
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As opposed the volcanoes in other places?
How to misunderstand statistics (Score:2)
Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually
I see, because we have an eruption of this magnitude every year?
After all, in the normal years with only minor eruptions that normally occur we must have exactly the same levels of gas released as large eruptive events.
Right.
Re:Yay greenhouse! (Score:5, Interesting)
So how many human civilizations' worth of CO2 and other emissions did that just kick out? ;-)
The comments on the original are to the same tune. What makes anyone think that volcanoes are a significant source of CO2? Where would the CO2 that volcanoes are supposed to emit come from?
Volcanoes do emit some C02 [realclimate.org], but then, they emit some of just about everything. Their climate effects are mostly reduced atmospheric heat content due to an increase in ash and aerosols in the upper atmosphere. This effect is particularly pronounced for tropical volcanoes because (surprise!) Earth gets most of its sunlight in the tropics, and while the ash/aerosol cloud does spread out over a few months timescale to all latitudes, its effect is greatest at the latitude of the volcano.
"Volcanoes emit far more CO2 than humans" is the equivalent of "Anthropogenic CO2 emissions increase the frequency and severity of hurricanes". The majority of people on both sides in the public debate on climate change have left the science far, far behind, and are happy to believe stuff that "just makes sense" to them.
Either Mushroom Volcano Cloud Or... (Score:5, Funny)
Japanese Ministry of Agriculture... (Score:2)
...Hard at work.
In 3D (Score:1)
Equivalent to billions of cows?.. (Score:1, Redundant)
Seriously, how many cow-burps and -farts was this eruption equivalent to, as far as "global warming" is concerned? People seem to seriously engage in breeding cows, that produce less methane [telegraph.co.uk]. If a volcano can negate the benefits of such research for decades in a single eruption, perhaps there is no point in doing it — better concentrate on eruption-prevention...
An explanation for the circular hole in the clouds (Score:2, Informative)
sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle
clouds being pushed aside
The circular hole in the stratus cloud deck is pretty cool, but I think it's not caused by the detonation pushing clouds away. Unlike a firecracker or grenade explosion, the amount of gas released is tiny compared to the amount of air heated by the blast. The clear-sky circle isn't caused by air moving outward *away* from the volcano, but rather down, *toward* it.
What goes up must come down. The volcano heats air near it, c
Here's a good joke (Score:2)
Explanation for clear sky circle near volcano (Score:2)
sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle
clouds being pushed aside
As I see it, the clouds aren't being "blasted away" by any kind of shock wave or gas flowing outward from the volcano. Unlike a firecracker or grenade, the amount gas released by a big eruption is tiny compared to the amount of air heated by it.
As air is heated by the volcano, it rises. But if air is flowing up away from the volcano, air a further away from the volcano must be sinking to compensate.
You may know how clouds fo
Keep your spying eyes off me ! (Score:2)
Ha ! Who's going to claim now that the government aren't really monitoring my every move with their high flying satellites, mole machines and robotic cuckoos.
'Just happened to be in the the right place' to film this eruption, pull the other one !
I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit. (Score:1)
It's the only way to be sure.