Volcano Just Shot Out a Mushroom-Shaped Cloud So Big It Could Be Seen from Orbit

[Judi Lynn]

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | June 26, 2019 06:37am ET

A towering mushroom-shaped cloud of ash and smoke recently rose from a volcano on an island in the Pacific Ocean, and an astronaut on board the International Space Station (ISS) captured a spectacular view of the eruption from high above.

The volcano Raikoke sits on the Kuril Islands, an archipelago of volcanic peaks that lies between Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan's Hokkaido Island. On June 22 at approximately 4 a.m. local time, Raikoke exploded for the first time since 1924, expelling a dense plume that could be seen from the ISS, NASA Earth Observatory reported.

The towering plume extended to an altitude of about 43,000 feet (13 kilometers); it rose from the volcano's crater and formed a spindly column that puffed out at the top. [The 11 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History]

In this highest zone of a volcanic plume, known as the umbrella region, the ash cloud's density equalizes with the density of the air around it, and the plume's rise slows and then stops, according to NASA. Circular gravity waves are visible in the plume's flattened top; they form as pulses of air from below push briefly above the plume's maximum height and then settle back down, an effect similar to the spreading ripples displaced by a stone dropped in water, according to the volcano-tracking website Volcano Discovery.

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