Monserrat Beauty & Violence Shot From ISS

I can't help it. Sometimes I see an image of the Earth from space and I fall in love with it. It happened last night when I came upon this brand-spanking new NASA image of the Island of Monserrat. Not only is the island and the eruption shown in wonderful detail, but even the swells on the ocean show fascinating interactions. I was so taken that I uploaded it to my Costco Photo online album and

ordered a 20x30-inch poster of it. My wife is not convinced she wants this on her wall, however. She prefers images of places we've been. So maybe we'll just have to go there. Shucks. ;)

Here's some photo info from NASA's Earth Observatory:

The Soufrière Hills, a volcano on the island of Montserrat, in the Lesser Antilles island chain in the Caribbean Sea, has been active since 1995. The most recent eruptive phase of the volcano began with a short swarm of volcano-tectonic earthquakes—earthquakes thought to be caused by movement of magma beneath a volcano—on October 4, 2009, followed by a series of ash-venting events that have continued through October 13, 2009. These venting events create plumes that can deposit ash at significant distances from the volcano. In addition to ash plumes, pyroclastic flows and lava dome growth have been reported as part of the current eruptive activity.

This oblique astronaut photograph from the International Space Station (ISS) captures a white-to-gray ash and steam plume extending westwards from the volcano on October 11, 2009. Oblique images are taken by astronauts looking out from the ISS at an angle, rather than looking straight downward toward the Earth (a perspective called a nadir view), as is common with most remotely sensed data from satellites. An oblique view gives the scene a more three-dimension quality, and provides a look at the vertical structure of the volcanic plume.