This astronaut photograph highlights two volcanoes located near the southern boundary of the Nazca–South America subduction zone in southern Chile. Dominating the scene is the massive Minchinmávida Volcano at image center. At bottom center is its smaller, but currently active, neighbor Chaitén.
The snowy peaks of the three Peruvian volcanoes provide a stark contrast to the surrounding desert of the Puna Plateau in this astronaut photo from July 15, 2010.
Emi Koussi is a high volcano that lies at the south end of the Tibesti Mountains in the central Sahara in northern Chad. The volcano is one of several in the Tibesti massif, and reaches 3415 m in altitude, rising 2.3 kilometers above the surrounding sandstone plains. The volcano is 65 kilometers wide. This view of the Emi Koussi caldera is detailed to the point that it doesn’t include the entire 10-kilometer diameter of the caldera, but reveals individual lava strata within the walls of the summit cliffs. Nested within the main caldera is a smaller crater that contains white salts of a dry lake at its lowest point. Here too, strata are visible in the walls of the smaller crater. The smaller crater is surrounded by a region of darker rocks—a geologically young dome of lava studded with several small circular volcanic vents.
On February 17, 2008, the skies above Shiveluch Volcano in Russia’s Far East were clear and calm, allowing the ASTER instrument on NASA&#rsquo;s Terra satellite to catch this view of a column of ash from a recent eruption seemingly frozen in the air over the mountain. The southern slopes of the snow-covered volcano were brown with ash.