Guest Thinkers — September 1, 2010

Chaiten eruption photos

Chaiten 2008

There are some astounding new pictures of Chaiten in full eruption over at the Smithsonian Website. There pictures were released by the USGS/VDAP team and show a full eruption column coming from the new dome in the Chaiten caldera (see above and below). The dome itself looks giant, filling up a lot of the old caldera (the highlands around the edge of the dome itself). The eruption is almost the antithesis of the 2004-08 Mt. Saint Helens dome eruptions which has produced a minute dome filling the 1980 crater. This rhyolite dome is the first major rhyolite eruption in almost 100 years, so I can’t understate the significance of Chaiten. Exciting stuff for those of us into silicic magma.

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7 min

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with

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