When the Shiveluch volcano erupted on Monday night, the diligent "zoom lens" on NASA's Terra spacecraft, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), was watching. It captured a thermal image of the erupting volcano on the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka. Known for its volcanic activity, the area is closely monitored because it lies along major aircraft routes between North America and Asia.
The ASTER image is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/?search=california&category=Earth .
The image shows the hot active lava dome complex, a debris avalanche or hot ash deposit and a 25-kilometer (15- mile) ash plume trailing to the west.
More information on ASTER is available at http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov.
The Terra spacecraft, the flagship of a fleet of satellites dedicated to understanding our global environment, is part of NASA's Earth Sciences Enterprise, a long-term research program dedicated to understanding how human-induced and natural changes affect our world. JPL is managed by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.