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Guest Thinkers —

Friday Flotsam

Icy volcanoes on other planets are kind of salty, too. That along with a 3-D image of the Sarychev Peak eruption and another eruption in Alaska.
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The Q&A; post will be coming over the weekend (there’s still time to send me a question!)


Icy cold volcanoes (well, geysers) on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.

In the meantime, here are a few quick hits:

  • Mt. Cleveland in the Aleutians had a small eruption. The plume was only ~15,000 feet / ~3 km. Cleveland is one of the more active volcanoes in the Aleutians, so this eruption is not out of the norm.
  • Landslides and rockfalls at Arenal (in spanish) in Costa Rica continue to prompt evacuations of tourists near the volcano. It is interesting to note that officials don’t seem worried about hotel development near the very active volcano.
  • The ongoing eruption at Tungurahua now can add lava flows to its list of accomplishments. There have been a number of tremors over the last day and lava flows were spotted near the summit as well.
  • If you happen to have a pair of 3-D glasses handy, the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a 3-D shot of the now-famous Sarychev Peak plume captured by an astronaut on the ISS. There is still a lot of debate about the cloud formation around the island in these shots.
  • And from the realms of cryovolcanism, recent analysis of the particles ejected from Enceladus‘ – a moon of Saturn – geysers suggest the presence of salty water on the moon (amongst other compounds). This is all thanks to the extended mission of NASA’s Cassini probe. Enceladus is sounding more and more like a fun place to visit, eh?
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