Quiet winds on an early spring day allowed a plume of gas and ash to hover above Shiveluch Volcano. This false-color (near infrared, red, and green) image was collected by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on the Terra satellite on April 3, 2013. Snow is white, ash is light brown, volcanic debris is dark brown, and vegetation is red. Three other volcanoes—Bezymianny, Tolbachik, and Kizimen—on the Kamchatka Peninsula were erupting simultaneously, and visible in the (very large) full image. A fourth, Klyuchevskaya, exhibited a small plume.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using data from the NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Caption by Robert Simmon.
