Awesome giant anvil-shaped cloud photographed by Space Station

A giant, anvil-shaped cloud bubbles up towards the Earth's stratosphere, looming over West Africa.

The amazing formation would be invisible to anyone on the ground and would even be obscure from a regular passenger jet since they can reach up to 75,000ft.

But astronauts captured the astonishing picture from hundreds of miles up as they orbited the globe on the International Space Station.

Anvil clouds are formed mostly from ice and normally form in the upper parts of thunderstorms. They get their shape from the fact that rising warm air in thunderstorms expands and spreads out as the air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere.

Streaks of snow are often seen falling out of the edges of anvils. This light snow usually evaporates as it falls through the relatively dry air surrounding the upper part of the thunderstorm.


Images released today showed Tom Marshburn and Christopher Cassidy doing final maintenance work on the exterior of the complex ahead of their departure today.

The four-hour and 54-minute procedure involved rewiring, camera setup, tidying cables and installing handrails and a portable foot restraint to aid future spacewalkers.

The five spacewalks together spanned a total of 30 hours.

The team from the visiting Endeavour shuttle fitted Japan's new outdoor experiments platform with television cameras, completing the final task for the £1.45 billion Kibo complex.

'Congratulations, you guys just completed the ... assembly,' Mission Control radioed once the second camera was secured.

'I can verify from up close it is, indeed, a beautiful laboratory.'

Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts are inspecting their ship to make sure it's safe for Friday's landing.

The survey of the wings and nose, being conducted Wednesday morning, is standard before a shuttle returns to Earth.

Nasa wants to make sure Endeavour's heat shield was not pierced by micrometeorites or space junk during its two weeks in orbit. The astronauts used a laser-tipped boom to check for damage.

Endeavour and its crew of seven left the international space station Tuesday.

As the inspection was under way, an unmanned Russian vessel carrying several-thousand pounds of supplies docked at the station. Commander Gennady Padalka had to manually guide the craft in because of a problem with its automatic system.

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Amazing pictures of 'hole in the clouds' from volcano eruption

A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.

Sarychev Peak, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, had been sitting quietly in the Kuril Island chain near Japan for 20 years, when it suddenly sprang to life on June 12.

Fortuitously, the International Space Station was flying overhead at the time, and managed to capture this spectacular image of the ash-cloud tearing through the atmosphere, sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle.

The station, which orbits the earth from a height of 220 miles, makes nearly 16 orbits of our planet every 24 hours, and happened to be in the perfect spot to see the dramatic eruption.

The unique images have provided a wealth of new information about the eruption process, and volcanologists are now excitedly poring over the data.

Most unique is the mist-like 'roof' to the cloud, believed to be either steam or condensing water pushed ahead of the advancing cloud of ash. Known as a 'pileus cloud', it lasts just moments, making this a rare snapshot.


Also visible, far below on the hillside, is the thunderous pyroclastic flow of super-heated rock as it cascades down the mountainside. When most people picture volcanoes, they imagine red-hot lava flows. Pyrochastic flows are their deadlier older brother. Appearing at the start of an explosive eruption, they can travel at 130mph, meaning there's nearly no escape for anyone or anything caught in its path.

But the most stunning aspect of the picture is the effect on the clouds: As the ash column punches its way towards the top of the atmosphere, the shockwave causes the clouds to scatter.

An alternative theory, one which these pictures is helping to test, is that as the ash rises, the surrounding air is pushed down, where it warms, and the increased heat causes the clouds to evaporate.

As the ISS continued its orbits over the next days, the astronauts could follow the plume as it drifted away from the island, incidentally causing disruption on nearby flight paths.




The volcano is part of a seismically active cluster of islands running North East from Japan's Hokkaido Island, and up towards Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

There are disputes between Russia and Japan over who owns which islands, but Matua Island, where the volcano is located, is generally agreed to be Russian territory. The Japanese call it Matsuwa Island.

The last explosive eruption from Sarychev happened in 1989, with eruptions in 1986, 1976, 1954, and 1946 also producing lava flows.

Ash from the eruptions has been recorded to reach more than 1,500miles from the volcano and commercial airline flights have been disrupted.

The height of the plume was measured at five miles high - a huge distance into the sky, although not enough to worry the astronauts peering down from above.

The International Space Station was first constructed in 1998 and is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

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20 Awesome Images of Earth as Seen From Space

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