On May 21, Iceland's Grímsvötn volcano erupted, sending plumes of ash and smoke nearly 8 miles high into the atmosphere. The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, an arm of the University of Wisconsin's Space Science and Engineering Center, managed to capture several visible channel photographs of the volcano's initial eruption through the Meteosat-9 satellite. The oblique viewing angle from this satellite helped to emphasize the large vertical extent of the eruption cloud.
Image: CMISS Satellite Blog.
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Jared Keller is a journalist based in New York. He has written for Bloomberg Businessweek, Pacific Standard, and Al Jazeera America, and is a former associate editor for The Atlantic.