Churchill Science

When volcanoes erupt, there is a huge cloud of dust, gas, and sometimes ash. For a long time, scientists have known that there are lightning strikes inside these clouds, but needed to invent a way to screen out the cloud itself to get a picture of what was going on inside.

This image was taken by the Lightning Mapping Array, set up by scientists to take measurements inside the volcanic cloud at Mt. Redoubt in Alaska. The scientists set up their equipment when they heard that Mt. Redoubt was getting ready to erupt again, and waited two months until the eruptions began. Here’s yet another reason why it’s important to monitor volcanoes!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 5:23 am and is filed under science, Science News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.