This Is How Total Destruction On Earth Looks from Space

[Luc]

Judging by the artefacts in the video, I'd say this is actually a series of photo's morphed together. Very cool and all, but probably based on only a dozen photos.

EDIT: 29 frames in fact. Here's another version with less morphy processing done on it: http://science4grownups.com/archives/2009/06/26/news/iss-ast...

[DanielBMarkham]

I hate to complain about titles, but couldn't the title have been "See a Volcano Erupt from the ISS"?

I mean I still would have clicked on the link. It's an awesome article.

[Tamerlin]

Great picture, mediocre article... "... erupted in a pyroclastic flow..." clearly the author doesn't know what that means... the plume isn't a pyroclastic flow, those are flowing down the mountainside.

[jacquesm]

Amazing. Also note how the shockwave has blown a circle of cloud away.

[ars]

It hasn't actually "blown" it away (like a fan would).

It changed the air pressure or temperature such that the water in the air is no longer visible.

I remember standing outside once, literally watching clouds vanish.

They would move, and when they reached some line in the air they would vanish (it looked like they were evaporating).

The vanish-line was also moving, in the same direction as the clouds, but slower.

[access_denied]

The title is misleading. The link shows an albeit spectacular short movie from a vulcano outburst seen from space.