Friday, July 1, 2011

New Nabro Images

New images of Nabro volcano in Eritrea (see my previous post) from the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. The gas and ash cloud has died down a bit allowing a much better view of the volcano and resultant lava flow.

The top image shows the area in visible and infrared light.  The IR indicates heat energy so the vent and hot lava shows up especially well.  Contrast this with the bottom image in natural light in which it's more difficult to see where the hottest material is still flowing.


Since there are no geologists on the ground here (at least that we know of), there is some interest as to the magma composition.  Volcanologist Erik Klemetti has tried to use these satellite images to work this out given how far the magma moved over several days and calculating its viscosity (different magma compositions have different viscosities).

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