Karymsky volcano and plumes, ASTER, March 12 2014, 00:36 UTC

NASA ASTER sensor captured a new plume at the vent, drifting cloud, dispersed ash and also thermal anomaly at the summit. See images below

Bands 3N, 2 and 1 in a RGB image, displayed in Google Earth. 

Examining this closer into the summit and we see the drifting cloud and plume at the summit. Using the sun zenith angle of 31.3^o, we can calculate the height of the two features. The plume is approx 1 km above the summit and the drifting cloud is drifting at around 2 km above the ground surface

Bands 3N, 2 and 1 zoomed in on the cloud and plume features.

We can also examine the TIR data. Below is the TIR data, converted with an emissivity normalization. The temperatures here show a hot thermal target at the summit. Also the drifting cloud is also seen detected in the TIR data. If we had not been able to have the visible data, can we determine if what we see here is ash based. Note the lake at Maly Semiachik shows warmer temperatures to the colder snow covered land.

TIR data displayed within Google Earth.

The following image shows a decorrelation stretch of the TIR data, that records the 'purple' colors from the RGB plot. Here, this relates to the ash and co-locates to the ash in the visible data as well as the features in the TIR data.

Decorrelation stretch of the TIR bands, purple colors represent ash.