Space Station Photo of Raikoke Volcano Erupts on Web

The week's best space photo is from the international Space Station, where astronauts happened to be at the right place at the right time to capture the major part of an eruption of the Raikoke Volcano on an island near Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula. The June 22nd photo (see above) was picked up by all sorts of websites. Experts say the volcano last erupted in 1924. The ash cloud probably reached about 10 miles in the air and was subsiding by the next day.

A huge cloud of sulfur dioxide was released by the eruption and was spread through the atmosphere by a passing storm. The other photo here (see below) is from NASA's Terra Satellite that shows the ash cloud also on June 22. It was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS).