Volcano Fever April 15, 2010
Posted by sarah in: geology, pics . Add a comment
The eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull on 21 March (RAGNAR AXELSSON/AFP/Getty Images)
Air travel in Northern Europe is currently being disrupted by the ash cloud spewed out by Icelandic volcano (ok, deep breath:) Eyjafjallajoekull, which started erupting in late March. This is a bit of a pain for anyone with travel plans and a major pain for those actually living near the volcano, but as for once that doesn’t include me, I’m going to delight in the amazing pictures being posted from Iceland of this awesome spectacle. Volcanoes are fantastically photogenic. Never to disappoint, the Big Picture at the Boston Globe posted a great series of images today.
Here’s a few more of my favourites from Flickr:
Sci-fi pictures from Mars April 13, 2009
Posted by sarah in: geology, science, space . Add a comment
Via the Bad Astronomer, some eery pictures from the surface of Mars that look straight out of a sci-fi flick. The images were taken by the HiRise camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Another brilliant recent addition to the HiRise image archive is this one: (more…)
Alaskan volcano erupts March 25, 2009
Posted by sarah in: geology, pics, science . 2comments
Location of Mt. Redoubt (Image: J. Schaefer/AVO/ADGGS)
It’s a good week for gelogy nerds. After last week’s undersea volcanic eruption in the South Pacific, the Alaskan volcano Mt. Redoubt erupted violently several times last weekend, and continues to rumble. Ash clouds rose to about 16 km according the Alaskan Volcano Observatory (AVO) and the eruption caused significant flooding (see this cool picture). The Alaskan volcanoes form part of the Pacific Ring of Fire which is littered with active volcanoes and a frequent site for earthquakes and eruptions.
Check out the AVO page on Redoubt for updates or follow on Twitter.
**Update, 29/03/09** Redoubt isn’t done erupting yet, more explosive eruptions took place in the last couple of days. The AVO Twitter feed is the best way of keeping up to date!
Webcam image of Redoubt erupting on Saturday. (Image: AVO/USGS)
**Update, 30 March 09**. Explosive eruptions have continued at Redoubt in thel last few days and AVO is reporting the first ash falling on Achorage. There’s no danger to the population though. More spectacular pictures have appeared on the AVO website, this one is particularly striking.
Lightning during one of Redoubt's eruption events on 28 March (image credit: Higman, Bretwood)
Big Picture: Volcano violence March 21, 2009
Posted by sarah in: geology, pics, science . Add a comment
The Big Picture series in the Boston Globe has had two awesome features this week. The first is a series of photos of the undersea volcano that erupted near the South Pacic island group of Tonga, triggering a series of earthquakes and a tsunami warning. The Guardian is reporting today that the eruption has created a new landmass in the Tongan archipelago. Amazing! The Earth can kick our asses any day.
Image credit: AP Photo/Trevor Gregory
Citizen Geology: Earthquake-spotting @ home October 29, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . 2comments
Earthquake in Reno, Nevada in April this year, as detected by traditional earthquake sensors (black) and by laptops participating in QCN (blue).
Citizen science is a term loosely used to describe scientific research projects that use resources offered by the general public, without specific training, often enabled by the internet. The SETI@home initiative was one of the first high profile projects in astronomy to use computing power in the homes of non-scientists to process large volumes of data; more recently the Galaxy Zoo project enlisted volunteers to help with the identification of galaxy shapes.
Now geology has also joined the fray of citizen science with the Quake-Catcher Network, led by scientists from Stanford University and UC Riverside. Using the same BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Networked Computing) infrastructure that enabled SETI@home, it links thousands of laptop and desktop computers around the world to help gather data from earthquakes, as they occur.
