Strands of pumice curl around L’Esperance Rock in this satellite image collected on August 24, 2012. Pumice is light gray, water is near-black, and the sparsely vegetated island is red in the false-color image.
The pumice was erupted in mid-july by the Havre Seamount, an underwater volcano about 50 kilometers (30 miles) to the northwest. In the weeks following the eruption, pumice spread throughout the Kermadec Islands, a volcanic archipelago extending north of New Zealand. The image was acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) aboard the Terra satellite.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using data from the NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team.
- Terra - ASTER