# Volcanic Plume and Vortices over the Western Pacific Seen from Orbit

JSC · 1991-12-01

Original title: Volcanic Plume from Mt. Unzen, Dust Cloud, cloud Vortices (the heading above is the museum's own, written by an AI model)

License: Dominio público (NASA) (https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/) · Credit: NASA/JSC · Source: https://images.nasa.gov/details/s44-77-074

## What you would see

At the top of the frame, upside down, the belly and tail of a space shuttle in orbit is visible, showing metallic details, thermal tiles and the open payload bay; its nose points toward Earth. Below, separated by the absolute black of space, the curved limb of the planet appears with a thin pale blue atmospheric edge. The ocean fills most of the view in deep and turquoise blues, speckled with sun glint that creates a bright mottled texture. To the right, a large dense white cloud mass with a spiraled edge dominates the western Pacific. Near the center, two sinuous trails of low clouds form chained eddies, the von Karman vortices, like delicate white paths over the sea. Farther west, close to the larger cloud mass, a thin grayish plume stretching southward can be made out: the smoke from Mount Unzen. On the upper left horizon, over the limb, a broad veil with purplish and yellowish tones is visible, the dust cloud. The light is crisp and high-contrast, with sharp shadows on the shuttle and luminous reflections on water and clouds.

## How to look at it

Start with the inverted shuttle at the top and let your eyes drop to the curved horizon of Earth. Follow the large white tongue of clouds on the right, then look to the center for the two snaking vortex streets; the thin gray thread beside the cloud mass is the volcanic plume and it shifts the sense of scale.

## Context

Image taken on December 1, 1991 from orbit and catalogued in the NASA Image and Video Library with credit to JSC. According to the source description, it shows the plume from Mount Unzen volcano on Kyushu, Japan, extending southward, von Karman vortices formed by south-flowing air disturbed by islands south of Korea at 26.0N, 131.0E, and a very large purplish dust pall originating in Mongolia covering eastern China and visible on the Earth's limb. The composition includes part of the space shuttle in the foreground, typical of missions from the Shuttle era.
(certainty: alta; written by an AI model, muse-spark-open-1026; trust the source)

## Curious detail

The von Karman vortices seen here are atmospheric turbulence patterns that repeat downwind of islands and mountains, named after physicist Theodore von Karman and often captured from satellites and shuttles.

## Questions

- How does your perception of a volcano change when its plume is seen from space rather than from the ground?
- What does the coexistence of volcanic ash, desert dust and island-shaped clouds in a single view tell you?
- How do you feel seeing human technology floating above planetary-scale natural processes?

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