Mexico Volcano of Fire eruption caught on camera - Video

Dramatic video caught on webcam showed eruptions with clouds of smoke rising above the crater of the Volcan del Fuego (Volcano of Fire), set between the states of Colima and Jalisco.

Three separate bursts were seen on Wednesday (January 21), Sunday (January 25) with a nocturnal one on Monday (January 26). Webcams de Mexico.com captured the dramatic images.

The 9,939-feet above sea-level (3,860-meters) Volcan del Fuego, one of Mexico's most active, has frequent moderate explosions.

Activity at the volcano was also reported in January.

TerraSAR-X image shows spread of lava at Bardarbunga

The lava outflow on the Holuhraun field northeast of Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano continues unabated. 

The lava field has grown to cover an area greater than 25 square kilometres. 

In this satellite image, the extent of the lava field is revealed using different colours.

To create this image, three sets of data were acquired at different times, but from the same viewpoint, and then superimposed.

They date from 13 August, 4 September and 15 September 2014 and were acquired by the German radar satellite TerraSAR-X.

Yellow shows the growth of the lava field between 13 August and 4 September; red shows the expansion between 4 and 15 September.

It is obvious that the area has doubled. A second eruption area can also be seen as a small red spot in the lower right corner of the image.

Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Remote Sensing Technology Institute (Institut für Methodik der Fernerkundung; IMF) are continuing to monitor the area.

Radar images can be used to analyse changes to Earth's surface throughout the entire process.

The DLR Earth Observation Center also measures the emissions of sulphur dioxide on a daily basis.

Bardarbunga sulphur dioxide cloud

Astronauts See Mount Etna Volcano's Lava and Steam from Space

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this photo of the volcanoes Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli on Aug. 14, 2014.

Credit: Reid Wiseman/NASA

Two astronauts aboard the International Space Station have captured a one-two punch of incredible views from space of Mount Etna and another active volcano in Italy spewing steam and lava.

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst managed to photograph both Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli from their positions on the space station earlier this month.

Gerst caught sight of the two Italian volcanoes and their lava flows at night, while Wiseman captured the mountains during daylight.

Both photos give viewers a different perspective of the massive volcanoes. The images were taken from the same angle, and thanks to that specific shot alignment, space fans can orient themselves to see the red lava flows in Gerst's photo.

Without the context provided by Wiseman's daytime image, the lava would be much more difficult to spot.

European astronaut Alexander Gerst uploaded this photo of two volcanoes, Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli, by night on Aug. 1, 2014. 

Credit: Alexander Gerst Twitter / ESA

Gerst has quite a bit of experience with volcanoes.

Before flying to space, he was awarded his doctorate for research he did investigating volcanic eruptions and active volcanoes.

While working toward his master's degree, Gerst also developed new techniques that could help scientistsbetter predict when volcanoes might erupt, according to ESA.

Mount Etna was actually the first erupting volcano Gerst climbed, according to a Twitter post sent out in July.

Mount Etna is the largest volcano in Europe, standing at 10,900 feet (3,328 meters) high.

It is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, but it hasn't had a major eruption since 1992.

The active volcano is almost always discharging gas, ash or lava.

This isn't the first time Mount Etna's active phase has been seen from space. NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg caught sight of the volcano from her post aboard the international Space Station in October 2013.

That same year, Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield also snapped an amazing image of the active volcano's ash floating through clouds and out to sea.

Both Gerst and Wiseman are about halfway through with their first spaceflight. They launched to the space station in May and are expected to return to Earth in November.

NASA Messenger: Volcanoes on Mercury

NASA Messenger: Lava-flooded craters and large expanses of smooth volcanic plains on Mercury’s surface. 

Credit: NASA

Mercury has long been a mystery to scientists.

Until recently, knowledge of the planet was limited to the grey, patchy landscape revealed by the Mariner 10 probe, NASA's first mission to Mercury in the mid-1970s.

Mariner 10's photographs showed little detail of how the surface was formed. Like Venus, Earth and Mars, it was clear that Mercury's rough crust reflected millions of years of aerial bombardment by comets and meteorites.

Gaps in our understanding of the innermost planet have included some basic knowledge such as the planet's geology, how it was formed and evolved, and whether its interior was still active.

But now NASA's return mission, MESSENGER, is allowing scientists to confront the full complexity of Mercury's surface.

Amid the countless craters caused by meteor collisions, the landscape has marks that were not made by such collisions.

Using the increased resolution of MESSENGER's cameras, scientists have identified previously hidden volcanic activity, which changes what we know about the planet's formation, and even the history of our solar system.

The detailed pictures showed that Mercury seemed to have smooth, rimless depressions that were obviously not produced by meteor impacts.

They were surrounded by bright, reddish material, believed to have been left by pyroclastic flows – indicating that the depressions were volcanic vents.

The presence of pyroclastic material – which is composed of volcanic ash – showed that the eruptions had been explosive.

In some cases, the debris had been ejected more than 50km from the volcanic vents themselves. This is a remarkable distance, as it means that Mercury's volcanoes must have been much more powerful than previously thought.

Mariner 10

The force of an eruption is determined by volatile gases beneath the planet's surface.

Initially dissolved in magma, as they reach the surface, these gases rapidly swell and shred the magma into tiny shards called pyroclasts.

This means that, in general, the more volatiles there are in the magma feeding an eruption, the more explosive it will be.

To shoot debris so far, the magma in Mercury's crust would need to have been brimming with volatile gases.

The latest signs of volcanic deposits from MESSENGER suggest that nearly 1.5% of the parent magma may have been occupied by volatiles.

For gases this is a large fraction, because as they rise towards the surface their volume increases dramatically.

Mount Rokatenda spews volcanic material - Palue island, Indonesia

Mount Rokatenda spews volcanic material as it erupts on Palue island, Indonesia, Sunday, Aug. 11, 2013. 

Nearly 3,000 people have been evacuated from the island, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency. 

The volcano has been rumbling since last October. (AP Photo)

A volcano on a tiny Indonesian island is spewing more hot ash and lava after causing six deaths over the weekend.

Command post official Mutiara Mauboi says more than 500 Palue island residents who earlier refused to leave the 3-kilometer (1.9-mile) exclusion zone around Mount Rokatenda have been evacuated to neighbouring Flores island. 

She says the search for the bodies of two children killed in an eruption early Saturday has stopped.

Government volcanologist Surono says the volcano's eruptions were smaller Monday but the potential danger remains high because the volcano is releasing hot gas clouds. 

He says molten lava and ash have covered most of Palue island in East Nusa Tenggara province. 

The island in eastern Indonesia has only a 4-kilometer radius.

EO-1 Advanced Land Imager (ALI): Tolbachik Volcanic eruption

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After more than a month of eruption, lava continues to flow from Tolbachik, one of many active volcanoes on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. 

Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

The current eruption at Tolbachik began on Nov. 27, 2012.

Lava flowed up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) from a line of fissures on the volcano’s southern flank.

Since then, some of the lava has cooled enough to allow snow to accumulate.

Snow-covered lava flows appear gray in this natural-color satellite image. Fresher lava appears black. A faint orange glow at the head of the northern flow marks the location of an erupting fissure.

The image was collected on Dec. 22, 2012, by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Satellite.

According to the Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT) the eruption continued through Dec. 30, 2012.

Geoff Mackley Captures Incredible Lava Video - Youtube

A team of three adventurers headed by freelance photographer Geoff Mackley braved its way to Ambrym Island, Vanuatu, where they made their way to Marum Volcano’s lava lake back in September 2010.

To capture the footage, the crew had to descend nearly 1,700 feet into the volcano. What follows is an amazing feat of nature gushing forth from the molten rock.

According to Mackley, the team came within 100 feet of the lava — the closest ever approach in that volcano.

Without special equipment, “it was possible to stand the heat for only 6 seconds” Mackley noted on his website.

But check out the guy in the protective suit standing near the lava lake’s roiling, spewing edge; he was able to bear the lava’s full sweltering 2100° F heat for nearly 40 minutes.

MARS: Student discovers new form of lava flow

Cooling lava on Mars can form patterns like snail shells when the lava is pulled in two directions at once. Such patterns, rare on Earth, have never before been seen on Mars. 

This image, with more than a dozen lava coils visible, shows an area in a volcanic region named Cerberus Palus that is about 500 meters (1640 feet) wide.

Photo by: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UA

High-resolution photos of lava flows on Mars reveal coiling spiral patterns that resemble snail or nautilus shells. Such patterns have been found in a few locations on Earth, but never before on Mars.

The discovery, made by Arizona State University graduate student Andrew Ryan, is announced in a paper published April 27, 2012, in the scientific journal Science.

The new result came out of research into possible interactions of lava flows and floods of water in the Elysium volcanic province of Mars.

"I was interested in Martian outflow channels and was particularly intrigued by Athabasca Valles and Cerberus Palus, both part of Elysium," says Ryan, who is in his first year as a graduate student in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Philip Christensen, Regents' Professor of Geological Sciences at ASU, is second author on the paper.

"Athabasca Valles has a very interesting history," Ryan says. "There's an extensive literature on the area, as well as an intriguing combination of seemingly fluvial and volcanic features."

Among the features are large slabs or plates that resemble broken floes of pack ice in the Arctic Ocean on Earth. In the past, a few scientists have argued that the plates in Elysium are in fact underlain by water ice.

Nasa Mars Reconaissance Orbiter: Sand Pit Funnel, outlet of Lava Tube

Sunlight casts a crescent shadow on the floor of an underground cavern in a recently released picture of a Martian "skylight."

This round opening likely leads to a lava tube, which is created when lava solidifies on the surface but keeps flowing underground. Eventually the lava drains away, leaving an empty cave.

Snapped by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the picture revealed that the skylight is 115 feet (35 meters) across.

The shadow helped scientists calculate that the cave floor is about 65 feet (20 meters) below the surface.

ESA Space Image: Lava crater in Mauritania, Sahara

The Sahara remains amazing. An old lava crater in Mauritania.

LIVE Webcam Views of Volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupting

Click on the picture or on this link for Live Webcam video Views of Volcano Eyjafjallajokul

Iceland Volcano eruption of Ejyafjallajökull pre-requisite for massive Katla eruption

Live Webcam view Ejyafjallajökull

The eruption of Ejyafjallajökull, it is feared, may continue for weeks, months or even longer, disrupting air traffic whenever the wind blows its ash into flight paths: last time it blew up, in 1821, it went on for more than a year.

The real fear is that it may well be followed by another massive volcano, Katla, some five times bigger, which would spew out far more of the stuff and could therefore cause far greater chaos.

Every time Ejyafjallajökull has blown its top since the Vikings first arrived on the island in the ninth century, Katla has swiftly followed.

Vulcanologists say these could just be the opening volleys of a decades-long barrage, as climate change takes hold. “Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems”, Dr Freysteinn Sigmundsson, of the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland, told Reuters. “Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades.”

NASA Mars: Lava Made River-Like Channels

Credit: Jacob Bleacher.
Details from the Ascraeus channel (red), meandering across the surface of Mars.

The insets in the black boxes show close-ups of some of the structures that lava can form: (left) branched channels, (middle) a snaking channel and (right) rootless vents; the rootless vents are also marked by yellow spots on the main image.

Flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, and this probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars.

These results were presented on March 4, 2010 at the 41st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference by Jacob Bleacher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Whether channels on Mars were formed by water or by lava has been debated for years, and the outcome is thought to influence the likelihood of finding life there.

"To understand if life, as we know it, ever existed on Mars, we need to understand where water is or was," says Bleacher. Geologists think that the water currently on the surface of Mars is either held in the soil or takes the form of ice at the planet's north and south poles. But some researchers contend that water flowed or pooled on the surface sometime in the past; water in this form is thought to increase the chance of some form of past or present life.

One of the lines of support for the idea that water once flowed on Mars comes from images that reveal details resembling the erosion of soil by water: terracing of channel walls, formation of small islands in a channel, hanging channels that dead-end and braided channels that branch off and then reconnect to the main branch. "These are thought to be clear evidence of fluvial [water-based] erosion on Mars," Bleacher says.

Lava is generally not thought to be able to create such finely crafted features. Instead, "the common image is of the big, open channels in Hawaii," he explains.

Bleacher and his colleagues carried out a careful study of a single channel on the southwest flank of Mars' Ascraeus Mons volcano, one of the three clustered volcanoes collectively called the Tharsis Montes.

To piece together images covering more than 270 kilometers (~168 miles) of this channel, the team relied on high-resolution pictures from three cameras-the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), the Context Imager (CTX) and the High/Super Resolution Stereo Color (HRSC) imager-as well as earlier data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA). These data gave a much more detailed view of the surface than previously available.

Image of Lava Spewing from Iceland's Hvolsvllur Volcanic vent

Lava spews out of a mountain in Hvolsvllur in the region of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland