Fast Fiction

I was reading through my regular science blogs this morning and found a link to the ESA site where they’ve captured some shots of volcanic activity in Russia.

high resolution image (552k)
That’s a photo of the Kliuchevskoi and Sheveluch volcanoes erupting at the same time on the lonely Kamchatka Peninsula (which most of us know from playing Risk).

The European Space Agency site has been following the activity for a while.

The more southerly 4835-metre-high Kliuchevskoi volcano began its latest eruption on 17 January 2005. By 7 March its consequent lava flow had reached the Erman glacier and started to melt it, causing a threat of potential mudslides. The hot volcanic material in contact with the surrounding ice and snow caused secondary explosions, hurling material as far as eight kilometres into the air. 

Above it is Kamchatka’s most northerly active volcano Shiveluch ñ also known as Sheveluch. It is 3283 metres high and started its latest eruption on 27 February 2005. The erupting material covers an area over 700 kilometres across with a layer of ash about 150 kilometres wide and eight centimetres thick, extending westward to the Okhotsk Sea. A ten-km-wide lava flow destroyed the Shiveluch seismological station, located about eight km from the volcano.

If there’s one other thing that this photo shows me, it’s that it looks damn cold in Kamchatka right now.