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.