Volcanic Lava Captured from Space in New Stunning Image

Want to see an erupting volcano? How about seeing it from space? The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LCDM) satellite captured an image of Paluweh volcano spewing ash as it passed overhead, revealing a bird's eye view of what an active volcano actually looks like.

The satellite's Operational Land Imager was actually able to detect the white cloud of smoke and ash from the volcano drifting northwest over the green forests of Indonesia and out over the nearby water. The Thermal Infrared Sensor on the satellite also picked up crucial information, imaging the heat emanating from the five-mile-wide volcanic island; it actually was able to locate a hotspot at the top of the volcano where lava has been oozing in recent months.

"Each instrument by itself is magnificent," said Betsy Forsbacka, TIRS instrument manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a news release. "When you put them together, with the clues that each give you on what you're seeing on Earth's surface, it's greater than either could do by themselves."

It's true that the satellite and its instruments have demonstrated some astonishing capabilities. It was able to capture an image that reveals the boundaries between the hot volcanic activity and the cooler volcanic ash without the signal from the hotspot bleeding over into pixels that imaged the cooler areas.

"We can image the white, representing the very hot lava, and right next to it we image the grey and black from the cooler surrounding ash," said Forsbacka. "It's exciting that we're imaging such diverse thermal activity so well."

In fact, the instruments are so precise that they can pick up subtle shifts in temperature within a 10^th of a degree Celsius. With two different thermal bands instead of the one band that was used by previous Landsat satellites, LDCM can make it far easier for scientists to subtract out the effects of the atmosphere on the signal. This, in turn, gives researchers a far more accurate temperature reading of the Earth's surface.

So what does this mean for future research? It could allow researchers to better assess changing climates across Earth's surface. In addition, it could allow scientists to better address atmospheric effects and create a better temperature record of our planet.