Bad Astronomy

Volcano erupts in Chile

A lot of you may have already seen this, but a 1200 meter volcano called Chaiten in Chile erupted the other day, blowing smoke and ash kilometers into the sky. It also sparked massive lightning, and the images are incredible:

There are quite a few amazing pictures of the event on Flickr. There is also this astonishing video on YouTube:

Other videos abound as well.

This is the first eruption of Chaiten in almost 9400 years. Small towns nearby have been evacuated, and I haven’t heard reports of anyone getting hurt.

I rather hope we get some images of the eruption taken from the space station. They tend to be rather dramatic.