OK, one more volcano awesomeness

Via Ian O'Neill and Richard Drumm I have one more set of shots of the explosive plume from the Russian volcano Saraychev Peak... but oh, is this so worth it. It's an animation made up of single images taken by astronauts aboard the ISS. Whoa. You really get a sense of how the plume is changing minute by minute, and the view of the pyroclastic flows is truly fantastic. A good way to see this is to let the video load, then use the controller to scroll back and forth in time along the footage. As I look at it, I realize just how amazing this sequence is... the ISS is always up there, so it's bound to see just about any explosive volcanic event on Earth. But it just so happens that it flew very close to being directly over this one, so we're looking straight down the plume. ...