Steam and Ash Plume over Tinakula Island

(Click on image for larger view.)

Tinakula is a small, volcanic, South Pacific island located about 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) northeast of Brisbane, Australia. This natural-color satellite image (top) shows a plume of volcanic gas, possibly mixed with a little ash, rising above the island’s summit. On February 13th and 14th, 2012, NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) detected heat signatures on Tinakula, and a small plume was apparent in visible imagery (lower image). Over the past decade satellites have detected intermittent “thermal anomalies” that suggest eruptions have taken place, but eyewitness observations are infrequent.

These images were collected by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite (top) and MODIS on the Terra satellite on February 14, 2012.

NASA images by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon (Earth Observatory), using EO-1 ALI data (top), and Jeff Schmaltz MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC (lower). Caption by Robert Simmon.

Instrument:
EO-1 - ALI - NASA