1/22/2003: Etna from ISS
 

http://cellar.org/2003/etnaiss.jpg

This Astronomy Pic of the Day beaut is a few weeks old in the queue. It's Mt. Etna, as seen from the International Space Station last fall.

It's striking, partly because we rarely get aerial views like this, space-height views. The APoD has a LARGER version available which is just huge; about 3000x2000 and about a megabyte in size. I took that version and cropped out just the volcano and a section of plume:

http://cellar.org/2003/etnaclose.jpg

By my extremely rough calculations, that image is about 50 miles square. (Interestingly, the whiter smoke at the bottom is coming from forest fires, not the volcano.)

This is actually our fourth Etna-related image. Over a year ago we had a satellite view of the same kind of thing, but this eruption was a little bigger it seems... some of the ash from it landed in Libya.

Following that satellite image, HB pointed out that Etna was in severe violation of the Kyoto protocol, and the 50 miles square tells you just how much. A lot. This is one dirty smokestack.

Outstanding pics, Toad. Thanks!

I'm a major space freak...you can't show enough astro pics/satellite pics to suit me.

HEY BRUCE, STOP YELLINGToad, Do you think the forest fires might have been started by the volcano? ;) I'm not so dumb after all.

Mt. St. Helens got me out of 5th grade after it blew on May 25th. It left a covering of ash over SW Washington. My mom was stranded in Portland for a few days because the the Toutle River bridge in Kelso was in danger of being washed out by the mudflows.

I'd never seen a mushroom cloud before that day. It makes you feel very small.

does correlation mean causation?
 

i'm wondering... if maybe... The forest fires started the volcano!!!:D

It's not the SIZE of the font, it's what you do with it. Small caps looks cool under the right circumstances:

MT. SAINT HELENS: It's dusty there.

Visibility factor
 

I kinda like the large, easier-to-read font (I'm blind as a bat), but y'know, the bigger the font, the more glaring the spelling and grammar errors.

Yeah but you can always change the font size on your own computer.