Daz Dayz

Smokey sunset

2010-08-05T11:07:00.002-07:00

Two nights ago the air was thick with smoke from the bushfires raging around British Columbia. The setting sun appeared as a deep orange then red globe hanging in the sky. I managed to shoot a couple of video sequences on my Canon 40D using the open-source EOS Camera Video Recorder software.

Dust storms in Oz

2009-09-25T17:51:00.003-07:00

Last Wednesday the biggest dust storm in 70 years swept over much of NSW and turned the sky over Sydney a blood red. The NASA Terra satellite recorded the dust storm from space and showed its true extent - an awesome display of climate change...

Stories are just hitting the wires that a second dust storm is affecting the East Coast.

A super volcano under Mount St Helens?

2009-06-13T12:39:00.001-07:00

This week's New Scientist magazine has an interesting story about the possibility of a super-volcano lurking under Mount St Helens.

Groth of the Mt Redoubt Lavadome

2009-05-18T14:38:00.004-07:00

The eruption at Mount Redoubt in Alaska continues, but with fewer explosive events at present. I have collected the images from the HUT webcam at Redoubt and processed them into a time-lapse sequence showing the growth of the lavadome. Watch out below!

Mount Redoubt shines (a little) in the dark

2009-04-22T18:43:00.002-07:00

Alaska's Mount Redoubt has been in an eruptive phase for the last 6 weeks. There are several webcams that follow the eruption and for the first time since the eruption began, the images captured by the webcams at night have shown evidence of the unmistakable signature of the incandescent glow from the growing lavadome. Cool! Or Hot, as the case may be...

2009-04-01T17:33:00.002-07:00

The team at the GalaxyZoo project have discovered some remarkable new galaxy clusters - nothing like this has been seen before - check out the full papaer on arXiv.org.

The Earth eclipses the sun!

2009-02-25T18:29:00.005-08:00

For the first time ever, we have seen a total solar eclipse by another planet. In this case, it is the Earth eclipsing the sun, not the moon. This video was captured by Japan's Kaguya lunar orbiter on Feb. 9, 2009. Beautiful! An English explanation for the event is posted at Science@NASA

Update: Also posted on Slashdot.

Planets imaged by two different teams

2008-11-13T20:47:00.003-08:00

It is a little unbelievable, but today two different teams of astronomers released images of extra-solar planets imaged directly for the first time.

The first image was captured by the Hubble Space telescope of a planet orbiting Fomalhaut. The planet is estimated to be three times the size of Jupiter and is the first direct image in visible light of an extra-solar planet.

The second of today's announcements was from the Gemini Observatory, which released images captured by the Gemini North telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea of two planets circling the star HR 8799, which is approximately 130 light years away.

Truly an amazing day!

trueSpace 3D now freeware

2008-07-23T21:04:00.002-07:00

Yes, Caligari have just released the latest version of their 3D modelling program as freeware! The only requirement is to register to enable the download of the complete program, manual and all the training videos.

The move was announced by the CEO of Caligari in his blog earlier today:

Dear Caligari community member,

Today is an important day in the 23 year history of trueSpace. We are releasing a major upgrade to our flagship product with trueSpace7.6, bringing significant improvements in modeling, animation, rendering and workflows, plus new direct export to Virtual Earth. Most of these you might already expect if you’ve been following my regular Captain’s Blog. What you may not expect is that we are making trueSpace7.6 available to everyone at no charge, in a giant step forward to bring high-end 3D authoring tools to all who want them!

trueSpace7.6 is far more than a SketchUp-style 3D architectural modeling tool. Instead, it provides a complete 3D authoring environment for any type of 3D content creation, whether that’s images, animations, objects for games, or content or worlds for online interactive shared spaces.

trueSpace7.6's modeling tools feature a variety of surface representations including full polygonal editing, subdivision surface modeling, NURBS, metaballs, and implicit surfaces. Those are supported by400+ modeling tools like real-time Boolean operations with full construction history so you can move subtracted parts of your design at any time during your work, or even change a subtraction to an intersection.

trueSpace 7.6 also provides advanced surfacing tools like layered materials, texture maps, normal maps, procedural materials, UVE projections, real-time DX9 pixel shaders that include shaders to simulate subsurface scattering, reflection, refraction, smoke, fire, water, anisotropicshader, metallic paint, glass – and those are just the real-time shaders!

The animation capabilities are even more impressive.trueSpace7.6 supports key-frame and motion capture animation on fully hierarchical objects. Key-frame animations can be seamlessly blended with procedural animations and physical simulations, all of which can fully interact with each other. This means you can have a walking character animated by key-frames getting hit by a procedurally animated car and fly away in response to the collision thanks to physical simulation.

In trueSpace7.6 you can also create fully articulated characters and interact with them using full body IK with editable direct manipulation widgets for joints (including physical stiffness), and apply physics or animated morphs for facial expressions.

If you want to create a photorealisticimagesor a video, then the built-in Lightworks high quality offline renderer will give you spectacular rendering results including soft shadows, raytracing, global illumination in form of hybrid radiosity, image based lighting, caustics, tone mapping, HDRI, anisotropic reflectance,multi-pass rendering to Photoshop layers, motion blur, depth of field, lens flares etc.

trueSpace’s award-winning direct manipulation interface with its easy-to-use 2D controls and 3D widgets has always been highly praised by users and press alike.For version 7.6 we have streamlined many workflows in extensive collaboration with our Beta testers. The UI is context-based and fully configurable, including toolbars, panels, widgets, layouts and projects. With universal drag-and-drop you can simply drop your model from the 3D workspace directly into an e-mail, written document, etc, and vice versa, clicking on the object in an e-mail will automatically open it in trueSpace.

There are also a series of advanced editors. In addition to the 3D workspace and modeling editors, there are a universal 2D node link editor, a script editor,a non-linear animation editor, a material editor, a UV editor, and more. Plug-ins are now accessible from the real-time 3D workspace and we expect to release truly amazing plug-ins for trueSpace7.6 in the near future, as well as stimulate 3rd party creation of independent products both free and commercial thanks to the availability of an SDK.

Finally, trueSpace7.6 is the only 3D authoring tool on the market which will allow you do all of the above in real-time shared 3D collaborative spaces where members of the design or animation team can maintain real-time interaction from anywhere in the world.

We are taking the unprecedented step of making these tools available to everyone for free in order to stimulate content creation for the present and future online 3D environments, and so that any artist out there with a dream can fulfill their vision without finding themselves trapped by budget limitations. This is particularly true if their vision includes emerging 3D online worlds, where free and unrestricted communities of web artists can collaborate on 3D projects and even establish new kinds of communities the likes of which the world has never seen before, way beyond simple chats in isolated 3D rooms or 3D islands.

Above all, trueSpace7.6 will empower you to create anything you dream up, whether you want to make illustrations for National Geographic, design products for Rolls-Royce, create buildings for Virtual Earth, make advertising or training videos, architectural walkthroughs, innovative video games, or animated films.All of these possibilities are now open to you simply by downloading trueSpace7.6 and learning what its powerful 3D authoring tools can do for you!

To download trueSpace7.6, visit the link below: http://cart1.caligari.com/web/Truespacemainreg.aspx

Also, to aid in your learning process we have made all of our video courses, previously $79 each, available at no charge, and you can download those courses here.

At a time when other companies are removing their low cost products to make it even tougher to get started in 3D, it gives us great pleasure to enable all artists regardless of age or income to create 3D in whatever field they dream of. We hope you enjoy your copy of trueSpace7.6.

From the edge of the Mily Way

2008-07-13T18:50:00.002-07:00

A little video I put together - totally ignoring physics and reality... From the edge of the Milky Way zooming down to the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre in Vancouver BC. Enjoy!

Lightning strikes Mount St Helens

2008-07-03T18:12:00.003-07:00

Just before midnight last night, a thunderstorm passed over Mount St Helens and the Volcanocam cameras captured a couple of direct strikes on the volcano! The image below is from the HD-Volcanocam, which provides quite a spectacular shot of a lightning strike that must have occurred just as the image was taken at 23:07 PDT.

Fireball over Mount St Helens?

2008-06-14T12:25:00.008-07:00

On reviewing last night's images from the Volcanocam cameras, I noticed that one of the images appeared to show a bright circular object above Mount St Helens at 02:21am this morning.

Checking the archived images from last night revealed another image that was taken a five seconds later than the image I had downloaded.

Comparing the two showed that the object had moved between the two frames, making it likely it was something recorded by the camera, rather than thermal or other noise. (which is the cause of all the small hot-spots on all the nigh time images, which do not move locations).

A brief animation of the two images with the bright spot, together with an image from five minutes before and afterwards is available as an animated gif and a full sequence from sunset to sunrise is also available on my website at www.luscombe-carter.com.

I'm not sure what the bright spot is. It obviously appears to be circular, but this could be a result of overexposure causing a circular record on the CCD. A bright fireball would fit the bill, similar to the one that was seen in BC, Washington, Oregon and Idaho in February 2008. Although I haven't been able to find any record of anyone seeing anything like this last night.

Probably a much more likely explanation is an aircraft or helicopter with its landing lights turned on approaching the JRO Observatory where the cameras are located. Although I haven't noticed any similar occurance since the recent activity at Mount St Helens began in 2004.

Another possibility is a bright Iridium flare, although this seems unlikely and more to the point none were visible around this time from Mount St Helens.

The Phoenix has landed!

2008-05-25T19:59:00.002-07:00

The NASA Mars Phoenix probe has successfully touched down on the surface of Mars in what appears to be a near-perfect landing. The probe relayed its first message immediately after touchdown at the first opportunity, and has just sent its first b&w image from the surface.

How the mighty Gnome has fallen

2008-04-30T19:38:00.004-07:00

The mysterious and mighty Gnome appeared from nowhere, apparently on a mission to clear away the snow to enable us all to have a better view of the clouds in front of Mount St Helens. He battled valiantly, but succumbed to the onslaught of snow earlier today. Long live the Gnome! RIP.

This morning:

Tonight:

A surprising visitor at Mount St Helens...

2008-04-29T19:39:00.005-07:00

There has been little activity over the last few months at Mount St Helens (MSH). The growth of the lavadome apparently ceased in January, seismic activity has quietened down to minimal levels and for the last few weeks the view of MSH from the Volcanocam cameras at the Johnson Ridge Observatory has been non-existent due to the massive snow drifts in front of the cameras.

So it was with a little surprise to see the images on the classic Volcanocam this afternoon showing that some unexpected help has arrived to make things interesting...

Update: Reports from The Columbian and King5.com indicate that access to Johnston Ridge is currently only by US Forest Service snow cat - so it's beginning to look like it may be an inside job. Views on the classic Volcanocam this morning show the snow appears to be gaining the upper hand on the little guy...

Meteor shoots across sky between BC and Idaho

2008-02-19T18:37:00.005-08:00

There were many reports this morning of a meteor seen flying overhead across British Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Oregon and Idaho around 05:30am local time. The images from the US Forest Service Volcanocam didn't show any signs of the fireball on the images I downloaded last night. Unfortunately, the Volcanocam website is currently down, and I have been unable to access the archived images from last night to check all the images for a sign of the meteor. Until it's back up, we won't know if it was visible from the Johnson Ridge Observatory where the Volcanocam cameras are located.

There's also a video purported to be from the Idaho Air National Guard, at the Gowen Field base in Boise, Idaho recently posted on YouTube, which may be the only images captured of this apparently spectacular sight.

An explanation for the multiple rainbows

2008-01-17T17:52:00.001-08:00

Spaceweather.com have posted an explanation for the bizarre multiple rainbows I saw last Saturday afternoon. According to Atmospheric Optics expert Les Cowley the explanation is:

"The multiple arcs are called supernumerary rainbows. They were so named because early natural philosophers could not explain them and considered that they should not be there. They are a diffraction pattern produced when rays passing through small raindrops overlap and interfere. If we are lucky we see one or two, these widely spaced multiple ones are exceptional and tell us that the raindrops were very small and, more unusually, all of the same size."

Who knew?

Strange rainbow

2008-01-13T16:46:00.001-08:00

Yesterday afternoon I noticed this bizarre rainbow in the sky, I have never seen anything like it before. It wasn't just a double rainbow, but there were at least 6 bows visible, but getting smaller and fading into the distance. I took these photos around 4:00pm yesterday afternoon looking east in Vancouver, BC.

Here's another slightly closer view, and following that a contrast enhanced version which more clearly shows the bows. Bizarre! Has anyone else seen anything like this before?

Four big earthquakes off the NW coast

2008-01-10T18:14:00.001-08:00

We all know that the area around Pacific North-West is a potential hot spot for earthquakes. Yet, it is still surprising when we get four quakes with a magnitude of greater than M6 in less than a week! Fortunately, none of the quakes were on the land. Three of the quakes have been situated just south of the Queen Charlotte Islands, BC and the most recent off the coast of Oregon:

MAP	6.4	2008/01/05 11:44:48				QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS REGION
MAP	6.6	2008/01/05 11:01:05				QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS REGION

MAP

6.1

2008/01/09 14:40:01

QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS REGION

MAP

6.3

2008/01/10 01:37:19

OFF THE COAST OF OREGON

Hopefully this isn't a harbinger of things to come and any further big shakes stay out at sea and don't wander landward.

Hubble Finds Double Einstein Ring

2008-01-10T18:00:00.001-08:00

The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a never-before-seen optical alignment in space: a pair of glowing rings, one nestled inside the other like a bull's-eye pattern. The double-ring pattern is caused by the complex bending of light from two distant galaxies strung directly behind a foreground massive galaxy, like three beads on a string. This very rare phenomenon can offer insight into dark matter, dark energy, the nature of distant galaxies, and even the curvature of the universe. The phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, occurs when a massive galaxy in the foreground bends the light rays from a distant galaxy behind it, in much the same way as a magnifying glass would. When both galaxies are exactly lined up, the light forms a circle, called an "Einstein ring," around the foreground galaxy. If another background galaxy lies precisely on the same sightline, a second, larger ring will appear. The massive foreground galaxy is almost perfectly aligned in the sky with two background galaxies at different distances. The foreground galaxy is 3 billion light-years away. The inner ring and outer ring are comprised of multiple images of two galaxies at a distance of 6 billion and approximately 11 billion light-years. The odds of seeing such a special alignment are estimated to be 1 in 10,000.

The Violent Lives of Galaxies: Caught in the Cosmic Dark Matter Web

2008-01-10T17:53:00.000-08:00

Astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to dissect one of the largest structures in the universe as part of a quest to understand the violent lives of galaxies. Hubble is providing indirect evidence of unseen dark matter tugging on galaxies in the crowded, rough-and-tumble environment of a massive supercluster of hundreds of galaxies. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the universe's mass. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys has mapped the invisible dark matter scaffolding of the supercluster Abell 901/902, as well as the detailed structure of individual galaxies embedded in it. The image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the supercluster. The magenta clumps throughout the image reveal the distribution of dark matter in the cluster. The galaxies lie within the clumps of dark matter. The image was assembled by combining a visible-light image of the supercluster taken with the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope in La Silla, Chile, with a dark matter map derived from Hubble observations.

Mount St Helens Qwest

2007-12-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I have posted an update on Mount St Helens, but the reality is that not much has been happening.

The last time any night-time activity was visible in the images from the Volcanocam was the 29th of May - just over six months ago.

Seismic activity has likewise decreased to a very low level. The lavadome in the crater is still growing at a fairly constant rate, but out of the line-of-sight of the cameras based at the Johnson Ridge Observatory.

The only notable event in the last week has been that the Mount St Helen's cameras have fallen silent, due to a problem with the data line, operated by telecommunications giant, Qwest. Recent storms soaked and damaged the data line, and until Qwest is able to dry it out and repair it, we will all have to wait.

The only redeeming feature of the current situation is that the current weather at Mount St Helens means there isn't much to see anyway...

But hopefully Qwest will solve the problem so we can at least get the occasional glimpse of any activity on MSH :-)

UPDATE: In the few hours since the post, Qwest (or nature) has dried out the line and the USDA Forest Service Volcanocam's are back on-line!!!

Earthquake swarm in British Columbia

2007-10-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

While Mount St Helens has gone quiet these last few months, with no visible activity from the crater at night for almost six months, there is growing interest in an earthquake swarm occurring further north in British Columbia, near Quesnel. According to Natural Resources Canada, Starting on October 10 an interesting series of earthquakes has been occurring in the upper Baezaeko River region, about 100km west of Quesnel, BC. More than 100 microearthquakes have occurred in this earthquake swarm as of 8 a.m. PDT October 15. These earthquakes are deep in the Earth's crust and none have been reported felt. This region is a known volcanic zone. The earthquakes are located about 20 km to the west of Nazko Cone which last erupted about 7000 years ago.

Comet Enke has its tail ripped away!

2007-10-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

NASA today released really funky video showing the tail of Comet Enke having its tail cutoff by a passing coronal mass ejection (copied above). The movie was recorded by the STEREO-A probe in April 2007 when the comet was inside the orbit of mercury.

Mount St Helens Volcanocam goes High Def!

2007-07-27T05:03:00.001-07:00

The US Forest Service Volcanocam has gone high definition! The new camera watching the Mount St Helens provides 1024x768 true colour images in near real-time of the activity at the volcano. This is a substantial upgrade to the trusty old camera which provides 640x480 pixel images and has provided some spectacular images of the current eruptive phase [e.g. see some of my animations, the USFS Hall of Fame].

The difference between the two images is stunning, below is a early morning shot taken at roughly the same time by the two cameras. The first is the "old" camera, the second the new higher def camera.

The night time performance is also much improved, although there is still some significant noise associated with the new camera (see image below) - which may be due to the high temperature it appears to be operating at. Notice in the upper legend on the new camera it provides details of the temperature of the camera and the outside air. The outside air temperature at 4:26am was a cool 13.5 deg C (56.3F), while the camera temp was a quite toasty 33.5 deg C (92.3F)! If there was any way to cool the camera down it would almost certainly improve the noise levels.

Even with these noise levels we can see some signs of good night time sensitivity from this camera. By removing the noise and combining the brightest pixels from the five images taken from 01:36 to 03:56 (the new camera only seems to be updating every half hour at present), we can see a bright object passing over Mount St Helens. I'm not sure exactly what it is, possibly a bright star or a planet (it's not the moon as it set at 2:47am), but it clearly demonstrates the greater resolution and sensitivity of the new camera.

With the addition of this new camera watching Mount St Helens, all we need now is the continuing extrusion of lava to move back into view of the cameras, and we can look forward to some spectacular views of the night-time activity at MSH!

Objects floating by the International Space Station

2007-07-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

Spaceweather.com has posted a video of a strange object floating around the International Space Station, as recorded from the Space Shuttle during the recent mission. Different videos are available wmv, mpg, avi.

By stacking all of the frames from the video sequence, we can see where the object travelled, and what's more that it appears there were actually three different objects recorded flying around during the video.

The object of most interest is the large worm-like object that passes behind the ISS, but is visible in the first frame as coming from beyond the station, as seen here:

The object passes behind the structure and appears to recede into the distance (in the video from the centre to the lower left side of the frame).

The two other objects appear to be travelling much faster and are travelling in the opposite direction - appearing in the left side of the frame and progressing up and toward the centre/top of the frame - possibly from the shuttle itself.

Maybe the the first object was also released from the shuttle - just a thought. But it does seem as if its a little crowded up there!

Software used: PD Pro 4.1 & Image Stacker.

Volcanocam update

2007-07-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

It seems that there may be some developments with the service provided by the US Forest Service Volcanocam. The current image update frequency of 30 minutes will soon be replaced with a near real-time update and large publicly accessible cache of past images. More intriguingly, if all of the rumours turn out to be true we may even have a bigger more detailed view of Mount St Helens coming our way in the very near future!

I can't wait for the new service to begin...

Little activity, slower updates - what is the US Forest Service doing???

2007-06-27T23:09:00.000-07:00

The level of seismic activity at Mount St Helens has been very low over recent weeks and there has not been any notable (or noticeable) visible activity overnight for some time now.

This seems to be because the extrusion of hot material in the lavadome is not currently visible from the vantage point of the Volcanocam.

The US Forest Service Volcanocam, situated at the Johnson Ridge Observatory (JRO), has recently undergone a clean and a software/server upgrade.

It seems that for whatever reason, the US Forest Service has downgraded the level of service to provide images only every half-hour or so, rather than every 5 minutes, as was the case since the latest eruption began.

I say "it seems" because there hasn't been any official confirmation of the downgraded service, or any explanation as to why this is the case.

What this means is that instead of getting an image from the active and on-going eruption at Mount St Helens every 5 minutes, the best the Forest Service can now manage is something approximating every 30 minutes (but appears to be variable, every 10-35 minutes the norm).

This does have some implications for the ability to monitor the ongoing extrusion of lava and potential hazards that may arise from Mount St Helens. Not to mention the ability to match seismic events with the visual images from the Volcanocam from a scientific perspective.

I haven't heard any official explanation as to why the people who monitor Mount St Helens, or more importantly, the people who live around the active volcano don't deserve to have accurate and timely information.

I will let you as any official feedback comes in...

cheers
darryl

Mount St Helens springs back to (night) life!

2007-05-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

After a long period with no visible night-time activity, Mount St Helens showed the first signs of life again last night. For most of the last few months bad weather has blocked the view of the crater, but over the last week or so, the weather has been clear but without any sign of the incandescent glow from the hot rock extruding in the lavadome. This was most likely due to the region of extrusion being out of the line-of-sight of the Volcanocam camera. Hopefully, this new appearance of the glow will continue through the summer...

A Xmas mystery on Mount St Helens

2006-12-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

Mount St Helens has been quietly active over the last few days, with two hot-spots visible in the crater last night - as shown in the stacked set of images above - and intermittently over the last week or so.

However, at 18:47 yesterday evening a large bright light appeared above and to the left of the crater as seen in this enhanced image which was superimposed over a daylight image of Mount St Helens for reference.

This bright spot only appeared on this one image, and no others. So it is likely that it is nothing more than a glitch or due to noise - however, the spot is much larger than the usual noise spikes that I have seen in the images from the Volcanocam over the last two years.

Below is the original image, and beneath that a b&w image with that had the noise filtered out - so you can see that I'm not making this up!

Any thoughts as to what it may be?

Mount St Helens Update

2006-12-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

Apologies to all for my recent tardiness, general life seems to have gotten in the way of updating the blog on a regular basis. Not that there hasn't been a lot of interest going on in the world, just my general lack of time to blog!

Mount St Helens was shrouded in clouds for most of the last few weeks and has only reappeared into view over the last few days - and it's been a little active, with a couple of hotspots clearly visible in the nightly processed images. The weather is forecast to stay clear for another day or so, so there may be more to come.

I will add a few more items including an update on the Visible Dust sensor debacle in the next day!

Sun goes BANG!

2006-12-12T23:42:00.000-08:00

Even though we are at the minimum of solar activity, the sun has released three large X-class flares over the last week. The latest is an X3.4 solar flare that was unleashed a couple of hours ago. So this means that some really impressive auroras may be heading our way. Stay tuned...

The Leonids are coming

2006-11-14T23:54:00.000-08:00

This Sunday night the Leonid meteor shower will be visible to people in western Europe, Africa, Brazil and eastern parts of North America. There has been quite bit of speculation that this years shower will be a bit more spectacular than we have seen in the last couple of years. So it may be worth going outside after dark and looking to the sky toward the constellation of Leo on Sunday night. Who knows what you may see?

Mount St Helens update

2006-09-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

Apologies, it's been a while since I posted here - too many other distractions have occupied my time :-)

Activity on Mount St Helens has been fairly quiet over the last few weeks, with one a notable exception. A hotspot appeared on the front of the new lavadome on the night of August 25/26th and has been visible on and off since then and on Saturday night there was a large outburst from that location.

It has been difficult to identify the source of the new hotspot in daylight images from the USGS as there have been no images posted that were taken from the viewpoint of the Johnson Ridge Obsveratory (the site of the USFS Volcanocam) since 4 May 2006.

Large outburst from Mt St Helens

2006-07-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

Despite the cloud cover of the last few days, there was a large and bright outburst from the crater last night just after midnight. The event didn't correspond to any seismic event (see for e.g. Yellow Rock seismic recorder) and it was so large as to briefly illuminate the entire crater.
The stacked image above shows all of the frames from last night combined onto a single image (and superimposed on an image of the mountain to provide reference). The full animation of the event is posted on www.luscombe-carter.com.

Mount St helens lights up like a Xmas tree

2006-07-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Last night there were mutliple hotspots on the lavadome - as evidenced by the above image which combines all of the hotspots seen during the night into one image. Animations of the show last night are posted on www.luscombe-carter.com.

Mount St Helens shakes with largest tremor in 2 years

2006-07-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning at 9:55am (local time) a Magnitude 3.6 quake shook Mount St Helens causing rockfalls and a plume of dust to rise from the crater. This is one of the largest tremors since the current eruption began over two years ago. Last night there was a much smaller tremor at 22:48 (e.g YELL webicorder) which triggered a brief, but bright display from the lavadome. There was no additional visible activity between midnight and sunrise this morning. The USGS has some images and a brief animation of yesterday's event.

When the moon hits your eye...

2006-07-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

Well the moon didn't hit anyone's eye last night (that I know of), but it did arc across the view of the Volcanocam viewing the crater on Mount St Helens last night. It was the first view of the lavadome for several days and the crater was quite active with numerous small rockfalls occurring during the night. The image above shows the moon on the left side of the frame and the active glow from the lavadome in the crater. An animation of the show are available on www.luscombe-carter.com.

A large outburst from Mount St Helens last night!

2006-07-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

After weeks of cloudy weather, then clear weather with little activity, Mount St Helens burst back into the spotlight with a large outburst of activity at 11:30 pm (PST) last night. The event corresponded with a magnitude 3.3 tremor centered on the crater and probably indicates a sizeable section of the lavadome has collapsed. The full details including animations of the outburst are available on www.luscombe-carter.com.

NASA videos meteroid impact on moon

2006-06-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

NASA has released video of a meteoroid impacting on the moon (copied above). According to NASA the resulting crater is, "...about 14 meters wide, 3 meters deep and precisely one month, eleven days old."

The video was recorded as part of a new survey being carried out to determine what risks are posed by meteor impacts to any future travellers to the moon.

More activity on Mount St Helens

2006-06-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

It has been a few days since we have seen much activity on Mount St Helens (or been able to see it due to clouds), but last night there were several bright out bursts caused by rock falls from the growing lavadome. The image below shows the location of the bright outbursts recorded by the US Forest service Volcanocam camera during the night. As can be seen the activity was located on the top of the growing "fin" as well as lower down on the older part of the lavadome.

An animation of the night's activity is also available here. It is interesting to compare the timing of the events with a seismic trace of from last night. The outbursts appear to correspond to the longer, broader signals seen on this webicorder trace located on the old dome within the crater. The larger event that occurred at 04:30 did not correspond with any visible activity, but this is possibly due to clouds obscuring the view.

Image from USGS/PNSN SEP SHZ CC : St. Helens - Old Dome

Mount St Helens reappears from the clouds!

2006-05-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

Just before sunset last night the weather cleared providing us with the first clear images of Mount St Helens for 11 days. The incandescent glow from the lavadome was visible throughout the night and there was one large rock-fall and associated outburst at 23:05. You can check out the images and movies on www.luscombe-carter.com!

Bad weather continues on Mount St Helens

2006-05-29T19:07:00.000-07:00

It's been almost two weeks since we had a glimpse of Mount St Helens, especially at night. Multiple weather sysytems have moved through the mountains and there has been nothing but vague images of clouds on the nightly images. The weather forecast offers a small hope that we may see something either tonight or tomorrow night, but it then looks like clouds and rain for the next few nights. All I can say is, "come on summer come on!"

The fin takes a hit - Mount St Helens update

2006-05-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

The large outburst from Mount St Helens on Saturday night was definetely caused by a section of the "fin" breaking away.

The images below were recorded by the USGS remote camera at the Sugar Bowl - the before and after shots clearly show a large section the rock structure had fallen. More images are available at the USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory. (Click on the image to enlarge it and see the animation.)

Images courtesy of the USGS.

A spectacular blast on Mount St Helens last night

2006-05-14T09:57:00.000-07:00

It seems as if a large part of the large "spine" that was growing out of the lavadome collapsed last night in a spectacular blast of activity. Processed images from the Volcanocam (see above) clear show a large amount of bright (i.e. hot!) material being ejected from the area around the lavadome. I have just posted an animation of the event here.

The large tremor associated with the event can be clearly seen just after 22:50 in the webicorder trace below.

Webicorder trace courtesy of USGS

No glow , but a few bumps in the night...

2006-05-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

Once again clouds obscured the view of Mount St Helen's crater during the night, although the weather is improving! So we should have better views over the next few days. There were several larger tremors last night, including a much larger one at 21:14, as shown in this webicorder trace from Yellow Rock (Yel - MSH). Here's hoping for some better night time views over the next week!

It's also worthwhile checking out the new views of the second large spine growing out of the lavadome in the crater. This feature will be the most likely source for outbursts during the night over the coming weeks. It's also the first such feature of the current eruption that is visible in the Volcanocam images.

Normal service has resumed....

2006-05-06T16:17:00.000-07:00

I've been distracted by many different things over the last couple of months and haven't had time to update the blog. Hopefully, I now have a little more time to spare and normal service can resume... :-)

Mount St Helens has been relatively quiet over the last few weeks, with the notable exception of Thursday night, when multiple bright outbursts occured after midnight. Animations of the night's display is now posted on Mount St Helens at night.

You may notice that the website has been redisgned - that was last weekends effort. I hope it makes things a bit easier to navigate.

Another active night on Mount St Helens

2006-03-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

The lavadome on Mount St Helens was very active last night, with multiple hotspots and outbursts occurring between sunset and 01:30 - when the clouds once again obscured the view. The image above combines all of the images from last night showing the extent of activity on the growing lavadome. For animations of the activity please visit the Mount St Helens at Night website.

Mount St Helens - week in review.

2006-02-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

This last week has seen a mix of bad weather blocking the view of the crater and a few fine nights with the growing lavadome putting on a good display, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.

The levels of seismicity haven't changed much, with the steady small drunbeat quakes occuring every few minutes, although there have been a few larger tremors this last week. This morning at 10:43 there was a M2.9 tremor and on Friday there were two tremors, the first (M2.9) at 14:27 and an M3.0 event at 19:17.

The forecast weather for the next week doesn't hold out much promise of seeing much at all...

Bright outburst on Mount St Helens

2006-02-10T07:09:00.001-08:00

The sky was clear over Mount St Helens last night and there were numerous small rock falls clearly visible on the processed images from the Volcanocam. At 05:58 this morning there was a larger than normal tremor on the mountain as recorded by the USGS/PNSN webicorders. This was followed by a bright outburst which briefly illuminated the entire lavadome, as shown in this image...

Mount St Helens reappears from the gloom

2006-02-07T21:08:00.000-08:00

After more than a week the clouds have parted above Mount St Helens and the incandescent glow in the crater is once again visible. For the last two nights there has been a good display, with several hotspots visible during the night and the occasional bright outburst due to a rock falls on the slopes of the lavadome.

Volcanocam captures small "event" at Mount St Helens

2006-01-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

At 10:43 this morning there was a larger temor recorded on the webicorders at Mount St Helens. This trace from the PNSN Mount St Helens - West (SHW) webicorder shows the event as the dark sqiggle - the automated seismic reporting system hasn't reported the even so far, but it is probably between magnitude 2 and 3.

The corresponding images from the USFS Volcanocam clearly show a small plume of steam/ash rising into the sky following the tremor.

The night time glow returns to Mount St Helens

2006-01-22T10:35:00.000-08:00

The clouds parted last night to provide us with the first extended nighttime views of the incandescent glow from the growing lavadome on Mount St Helens since 14 December 2005! This morning the Volcanocam is also providing our first daylight views of the crater as well. Revealing a snow covered mountain with the active portions of the lavadome as a distinct area free of snow cover.

Cassini approaches Titan

2006-01-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

One year after the Huygens spaceprobe successfully landed on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, the Cassini spacecraft will make another close flyby of the moon early tomorrow morning.

Titan from a distance of approximately 1,257,518 kilometers, taken on 13 January 2006.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

A fireball in the sky

2006-01-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

If you live anywhere between Bakersfield in California and Surrey in British Columbia, you may be able to catch a glimpse of the anticipated fireball as the Stardust probe returns to Earth Sunday morning at 1:56:39 a.m. PST.

After the Stardust capsule returns safely to earth, you may want to consider giving NASA scientists a hand to find the stardust it is hopefully carrying onboard! See Stardust@home for the full project details.

UPDATE: NASA's Stardust sample return capsule successfully landed at the U.S. Air Force Utah Test and Training Range at 2:10 a.m. Pacific time (3:10 a.m. Mountain time).

Stardust Capsule Return as seen from NASA's DC-8 Airborne Laboratory

Image credit: NASA/Ames Research Center

Mount St Helens and Augustine Volcanoes

2006-01-14T12:59:00.000-08:00

Clouds continue to obscure the view of Mount St Helens, so we still haven't had a clear view of the mountain for almost a month, either during the day or at night. There was one noticeably stronger tremor last night at 18:01 and the Volcanocam is currently showing nothing more than clouds.

I have posted an animation of the activity on Mount St Helens on the 18, 19 and 20th August 2005 on Google Video - you can view it online or download for iPod, Sony PSP, Windows & Mac for no charge, although the downloads require the installation of the Google Video player.

Kevision posted a note on Daz Dayz pointing out the volcanic action happening up at the Augustine volcano in Alaska. The Alaska volcano observatory also has a webcam to view the eruptions progress - possibly something to check out until the weather clears at Mount St Helens - although at present it is also showing a cloudy view :-)

The Volcanocam returns!

2006-01-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

The views of Mount St Helens crater are once agin being streamed to the world via the Volcanocam at the Johnson Ridge Observatory (JRO). The camera has been out of action since the 14th December 2005 due to a problem with the communications server, which has now been replaced. Unfortunately, the weather is not really co-operating and the views of the crater have been obscured by clouds for the last 24 hours!

If you are interested in views of the night sky (and don't have the same problem with clouds), the website Universe Today has a wonderful e-book available called What's Up 2006 - 365 Days of Skywatching. It provides a guide on what's in the sky every night for the coming year, and best of all it's free!

Happy New Year

2005-12-31T13:39:00.000-08:00

There hasn't been any major developments at Mount St Helens over the last week. The levels of seismicity have remained constant and the Volcanocam is still suffering a communications glitch that stops the images being sent to the public server.

The USGS/CVO is reporting that the eruption continues by the slow extrusion of dacite lava within the crater of Mount St. Helens. Repetitive small earthquakes occur every 2-3 minutes in the shallow part of the vent. The seismicity remains the best instrumental indication that the eruption is ongoing, because robust winter storms have kept us from visual observations of the volcano since December 18. Two tiltmeters within 500 m of the vent show small ground deformation characteristic of the extrusive process.

Dr Tony Phillips at spaceweather.com has launched a new web gallery of all of the aurora images that he has posted on the site from around the world over the last five years - it's well worth checking out for some stunning images. Such as the image below from Mark Urwiller taken 5 miles northwest of Kearney Nebraska on May. 15 2005.

Image credit: Mark Urwiller
5 miles northwest of Kearney Nebraska on May. 15

Happy New Year everyone!

Merry Christmas

2005-12-22T18:17:00.000-08:00

Details of the glow on Mount St Helens

2005-12-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

Now that the focus of the Volcanocam is fixed, we can see a lot more detail in the nighttime images. Including the incandescent glow being emitted by the individual hotspots in the crater - which appear as flickering lights in the animations from the night. Shown below is a composite of images from the night of 09/10 December. Clearly visible are a number of discrete hotspots from different areas of the growing lavadome. Also visible are the two defective, or "hot" pixels in the camera.

The following image consists of the hotspots from the above composite, superimposed onto a n averaged daytime image from the 10th December.

The Volcanocam lives!

2005-12-09T20:15:00.000-08:00

It hasn't been a particularly good few weeks for the Volcanocam. On the 6th November there was a power failure which caused the communications link to the server to drop out. All we saw was a blue screen of doom. On the 9th November a maintenance crew fixed the power problem and restored the link, but in the process the focus of the camera was slightly thrown out of whack. Then the focus seemed to degrade as the weather worsened. Which also precluded anyone from the US Forest Service from getting to the Johnson Ridge Observatory (JRO) to fix the problem.

Because of the way the focus was out, the night time images of the incandescent glow from the growing lavadome became large circular blobs of light, instead of reasonably well focused views of the night time behaviour of the mountain. Much like this example from 30 November:

But this afternoon, the Volcanocam team were able to get to the JRO site and readjust the focus and clean the lens of the Volcanocam camera. So we have gone from the above defocused blob, to a level of detail that enables a true appreciation for what is happening on the mountain at night...

The current Volcanocam update says: Camera Update @ 4:30 pm PST - We were successful in cleaning the camera and readjusting the focus. The day was clear, no wind and warm, about 45*F at Johnston Ridge. Elk, coyotes and a porcupine assisted in our efforts with the camera today.

A big, big, BIG thank you to Dennis Lapcewich and the Volcanocam team at the US Forest Service, and the elk, coyote and porcupine for their very kind assistance...

Stay tuned for new, sharper, animations of the nightly show of Mount St Helens on my website.

A spectacular meteor lights up the night sky

2005-12-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

Photo: ABC TV news

A specatular meteor lit up the night sky in Perth, Western Australia on Saturday night. An ameteur videographer at a party captured the bright fireball's passage across the sky. The video is available on the ABC news website here: RealVideo Broadband, RealVideo Dialup, Windows Media Player Broadband, Windows Media Player Dialup

Stroboscopic snowflakes?

2005-11-29T20:21:00.000-08:00

When I first came to Canada in 2000 I was living in Ottawa, so I got to see a lot of snow. Being from Australia I was fascinated by the snow. Less so about the ice and the minus 35 degrees, but the snow was almost magical.

Growing up in Geelong it never snowed, although I do remember once when there was a hail storm that dumped about 2cm of hail on the ground that I could pretend it was snow. But I was 19 before I experienced my first clump of snow on the side of the road driving through a National park in Victoria (AUS).

Now that I'm living in Vancouver (BC), snow happens much less frequently than in Ontario. But I'm still intrigued and fascinated by it.

Last night about 5cm of snow fell. I stood out on the balcony of our apartment and watched it fall. Watched it twist and move in the wind. It wasn't too long before I set up my camera to take some photos. It seemed like the thing to do.

There is a street lamp a few metres from the balcony and I wanted to use a long time exposure, in order to capture the dance of the snowflakes as they fell. When I went through the photos tonight, I noticed something that intrigued me. In the images where the snow was falling fast, so the flakes were captured as long streaks on the image, there was a regular variation in the brightness along the length of the streaks.

Canon 300D, 70-200mm f4L lens @ f5.6 + 0.5 seconds + ISO 400

But in the images where the flakes were not moving in such a fast and uniform motion, there wasn't any hint of the banding on the streaks.

Canon 300D, 70-200mm f4L lens @ f5.6 + 0.5 seconds + ISO 400

And this is another example where some of the streaks show banding and others don't appear to:

Canon 300D, 70-200mm f4L lens @ f5.6 + 0.5 seconds + ISO 400

I captured a lot of images last night and many of the images show this effect, it is remarkably consistent. One thing I do know is that it isn't caused by the snow flakes tumbling and varying in brightness across the frame. In fact it is always the opposite effect. The banding only occurs in those images where the snow was moving rapidly across the image.

I can only summise that it is caused by some sort of strobe effect from the sodium street lamp. Although I haven't been able to find any reference to this on-line. Although I may have used the wrong search terms.

Here are a couple of other images showing the banding effect - the street light illuminating the flakes is just above the upper left corner of these shots:

Canon 300D, 70-200mm f4L lens @ f5.6 + 0.5 seconds + ISO 400

Can anyone confirm the mechanism that causes this intriguing effect?

The fountains of Enceladus

2005-11-28T17:58:00.000-08:00

The Cassini space probe has snapped some fascinating images of fountains of particles streaming into space from Saturn's moon Enceladus. The image below shows the streams of material illuminated by sunlight from behind the moon... A false colour image shows more details of the phenomenon.

Ever since the Tiger Stripes seen near the Southern pole of the moon were found to be warmer than the surrounding landscape, it has been suspected that some form of ice volcano may be pushing material out the Tiger Stripes. Now we now that the effect is real and we can add another body in the solar system to the list of geologically active worlds. Cool!

Mount St Helens update

2005-11-27T22:42:00.000-08:00

The last week has been both interesting and frustrating. Interesting because there have been several nights when the weather has been clear and the glow from the lavadome has been visible. Frustrating, because the focus of the Volcanocam is still not correct and won't be for another week or so.

The focus of the Volcanocam was knocked out of whack on the 9th November when the maintenance crew fixed the power problem to the camera. Unfortunately, at this time of year it is not a simple matter to drive up to JRO and fix the problem and the problem with the focus of the camera wasn't apparent when the crew performed the original repairs.

What is worse from the night time image perspective is that the focus was knocked out even further for the near-IR response of the camera, compared to the daylight view.

I have tried various means of processing the Volcanocam images to compensate for the problem, but deconvolution is not a simple solution. Without knowing the exact nature of the focus problem, you have to use generic solutions. This means that the solution may not accurately compensate the problem.

The most success I have had is using maximum entropy deconvolution. The following is an example of the current state of night time images from the Volcanocam, and this is what I have been able to extract using deconvolution. It does look similar to the night time images from previous nights, but the best solution will only come from the maintenance people being able to get back to the camera and correct the problem manually.

Here's hoping they will be able to get back up to JRO and fix the problem sooner rather than later...

Microsoft patents web photo gallery software

2005-11-22T20:12:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has been awarded a US patent (US #6,964,025) for software which enables a user to easily and automatically create a photo gallery of thumbnail images on a Web page. This is further explained to mean that a user selects a group of original images, and the tool automatically produces a corresponding group of thumbnail images on the Web page, with hyperlinks to the corresponding original images.

Now this doesn't exactly sound like rocket science to me. The patent goes on to detail the selection of images, creation, cropping, rotation and linking of thumbnails to the larger original sized image, displaying a preview of the webpage and many other options that are freely available in many freeware, shareware and commercial programs designed to simplify the creation of web photo galleries.

Now according to Microsoft, when creating Web pages, especially Web pages that incorporate a considerable amount of content such as thumbnail images hyperlinked to original parent images, the file management and structural organization required can be challenging, particularly for the casual user.

Clearly, it would be desirable to enable a plurality of images to be incorporated into a Web page as thumbnail images in a single operation, rather than requiring each image to be added individually through a series of manual steps, or even as an automated process that must be repeated for each image. It would also be desirable to provide a plurality of user-friendly templates that automatically define several different formats for a plurality of thumbnail images on a Web page, so that a casual user can easily create an aesthetically-pleasing gallery of thumbnail images with a minimum of effort.

Interestingly, they go on to claim that the prior art does not teach or suggest such a tool.

The term prior art is patent speak for what exists in the public domain. Now admittedly the patent application was filed on March 20, 2001, but can this really be a serious patent and what are the implications for all of the existing web photo gallery creation software out there? Is Microsoft about to start demanding royalties from every program that automatically create a photo gallery of thumbnail images on a Web page?

Unjust corporate intimidation of a concerned mother

2005-11-13T22:17:00.000-08:00

Louisette Lanteigne of Waterloo, Ontario, was concerned about the environmental and human costs of the development in her local area caused by the property developer Activa Holdings Inc. She studiously recorded environmental and EHS violations by Activa, even winning accolades from the provincial authorities for her efforts.

Now Activa Holdings are suing this concerned single mother for $2 million for libel.

This is obviously nothing more than a SLAPP suit - a legal action intended to intimidate the recipient into submission.

After reading through the information that Louisette Lanteigne has compiled I don't see anything that deserves a $2 million law suit. I do see a mother that is concerned about her children and her community. I also see a corporate entity that has far too much money at its disposal and no consideration of ethics in its behaviour.

Activa Holdings Inc, is not a publicly listed company in Canada, as evidenced by a search for their name on SEDAR. This story was recently posted on Slashdot, and some of the responses helped to pinpoint the people behind this law suit.

If you felt their behaviour was unacceptable I would encourage you to send them and e-mail expressing your outrage that they would try such legal BS against a single mother, who did little more than report their own environmental and EHS failures. This is not an attitude or response you would expect from a responsible company.

A first point of contact would be:

Peter Armbruster
Activa Group
735 Bridge Street West
Waterloo, ON N2V 2H1
Phone: (519) 886-9400, Ext 104
Fax: (519) 886-8955
E-mail: parmbruster@activagroup.ca

Mount St Helens - update 13 November 2005

2005-11-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

Well, another week without much activity on the mountain. The week began with a glitch in the Volcanocam causing the images to appear a featureless blue. This turned out to be a blown fuse in the power supply feeding the camera.

A good thing the system worked by blowing the fuse rather than the camera! It was repaired on Wednesday by the maintenance crew and pictures started to flow back to the server. Unfortunately, during the repairs, the focus on the camera was slightly changed, leading to slightly out of focus images during the day, and very diffuse images of the glow at night.

The US Forest Service have scheduled another maintenance trip for this week to adjust the focus. Although the weather has been so bad that there hasn't been much to see at night or during the day. The weather forecast for the next week looks a little more promising, so here's hoping that the weather gives us some good views of the crater at night this week.

On the morning of 12 November 2005, the clouds parted to reveal icicles nicely framing the view of the crater. Not an eruption, but pretty nonetheless...

Mount St Helens update

2005-11-06T14:38:00.000-08:00

The views of the crater from the Volcanocam have been obscured by clouds almost every day this week, so there is little to report on the night time activity from the mountain. Last night at 18:43 the Volcanocam stopped tranmitting images from the mountain and since has only been showing featureless blue images, reminiscent of the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), which should be familiar to most Microsoft Windows users... hopefully this is just a temporary glitch and not a sign of a more fundamental problem with the camera.

The USGS recently posted an interesting image comparing the current view of the crater with those from November 29, 2004, February 22, 2005, June 21, 2005, and August 31, 2005 (shown below). The growth of the new lavadome continues unabated, with the most recent figures showing that the volume had grown to 62 million cubic meters (81 million cubic yards) at an average rate of growth during late July and early August of about 2 cubic meters per second.

USGS photograph taken on October 30, 2005, by John Pallister

There is also a new mosaic of images of the growing lavadome taken over the last year from the Sugarbowl. The Sugar Bowl Dome is located at the crater mouth about 2.3 km (1.4 miles) north-northeast of the vent.

The Prometheus Effect

2005-10-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

Back in July I posted a small animation of raw images from the Cassini spacecraft one of Saturn's moons causing some really intriguing turbulence in the F-ring. Today NASA released a photomontage of the effect the moon Prometheus has on Saturn's F-Ring... Funky!

Things that go glow in the night...

2005-10-25T19:23:00.000-07:00

The nature of the incandescent glow from the growing lavadome on Mount St Helens appears to be a little more multi-faceted than in the past. On the night of 21/22 October 2005 the glow appeared to flicker between different locations in the crater. A combined image of all of the Volcanocam images from that night shows that the glow now appears to be coming from multiple sites in the crater:

The four distinct bright areas in the shot above appear to match the different mounds of rubble in the current lavadome as shown in a recent image from the USGS taken on October 18:

USGS photograph taken on October 3, 2005, by Stephanie Konfal
and Dan Dzurisin, and October 18, 2005, by Cate Fox-Lent

Last night the glow still appeared to flicker between different locations, but not over so much of the area as on the 21/22 October. Looking at another image combining all of the individual images from the night time shots from the Volcanocam shows that the activity was isolated to only two of the "mounds" on the lavadome...

Update on Camera damage from Visible Dust cleaning liquid

2005-10-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

Back on 31 July I posted an article about the damage caused by the Sensor Clean cleaning liquid sold by Visible Dust to the CMOS sensor on my Canon Digital rebel 300D camera.

Since then I sent the camera to the Canon Canada service centre in Calgary for repair. Canon received the camera on 09 August 2005. On the 29th August Canon left a message indicating that the repair costs would be CAN$216.60, which would cover any damage to the camera and that a technician would examine and repair the camera in the next 10-14 days. I authorised the repair and expected to hear something in the next couple of weeks.

After hearing nothing from Canon I called them on 29 August. Unfortunately, I was unable to speak directly to any of the service representatives. Instead I left my details with the receptionist and she assured me that they would respond by the end of the next day. I also e-mailed Canon customer service but received no response.

On 14 October I phoned Canon and managed to speak to someone in the service department. He was very apologetic about the amount of time they have had my camera and explained that the service department had moved to a new location and a new operating unit within the company. The interesting comment was that the camera had been sent to one of their external contractors for assessment. They had responded that they weren't authorised to repair the sensor. Apparently this was some time ago, but nothing had been done about it since then.

The Canon rep also indicated that there had been a number of cases where camera repairs had slipped through the cracks and had not been addressed in the usual time frame. Like I said, he was very apologetic. He added that he would raise the issue with his manager and that he would get back to me by close of business on Monday (17 Oct).

After hearing nothing on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I rang Canon late on Wednesday afternoon. But once again all the lines to the service department were busy and I only got to leave a message on voicemail. Canon did not respond to my message.

Today (Friday, 21 Oct) I rang them again and got through to the service department. After saying my name, the service rep recognised who I was and apologised for not getting back to me on Monday. He then typed my details into the system and said that the camera was now with their in-house technician. Who apparently has an enormous backlog of work. But he would try and see if my case could be expedited due to the length of time since they had received the camera. He then committed to letting me know by next Monday how long it would take to repair.

I have to admit that I was expecting a much better response from Canon Canada. In all my dealings with them in the past, they had always been very prompt and responsive. Hopefully this is a temporary glitch and not an indication of more serious problems arising from their reorganisation of the service department.

I will update this post as the repair saga develops...

Mount St Helens glows through the night

2005-10-21T07:25:00.000-07:00

After a week of bad weather and less than exciting night time displays by Mount St Helens, last night the mountain put on a great show. The sky was clear and there was a glorious view of the the incandescent glow from the lavadome. The partially full moon also provided the illumination to enable us to see a fairly strong steam plume rising to the sky for most of the night!

First anniversary of the glow from Mount St Helens

2005-10-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

It's one year since several sharp eyed Volcanocam watchers noticed an eerie glow appear on the night of 11/12 October 2004.

While posting daily animations of the night time views of the mountain, there have been large explosions illuminating the night, multiple glows from the crater, the passage of a lunar eclipse, the less than mysterious camera defect, and even the passage of a odd visitor in the sky on April Fool's Day.

What a great year it's been. Here's hoping for an interesting year ahead!

Mount St Helens remains relatively quiet

2005-10-08T11:58:00.000-07:00

Over the last week bad weather has obscured the view of the crater for most nights. The weather improved last night and provided our first views of the night time activity of the growing lavadome for several days. Despite several small tremors being recorded overnight, there were no bright outbursts in activity and the glow from the crater was very faint.

The USGS/CVO is reporting that, moderate sized earthquakes continue to punctuate the background level of small drumbeat earthquakes several times per day, but this is par for the course at present. There has been no significant change in the level of activity at the mountain over the past few days.

A couple of outbursts from Mount St Helens last night

2005-09-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

It was another clear night over at Mount St Helens and there was considerable activity in the crater. The night began with a small glow emanating from the lavadome, which was followed by a small outburst at 22:56, then two much larger outbursts in activity at 00:21 and 04:51 this morning.

On Thursday the USGS/CVO held a press conference to celebrate the first anniversary of the current eruption. They released a range of interesting images and poster papers covering all aspects of the eruption so far. Note that some of the posters are very large PDF files...

Images from USGS/CVO:

Mount St. Helens new dome as seen from Sugar Bowl Remote Camera - "The First Year"
Monthly images from October 10, 2004, through September 18, 2005
Memorable Images from "The First Year"
Nearly 350 "memorable" images selected from over the thousands taken this past year, which tell the story of "The First Year".

Informational Posters from the USGS/CVO:

Brutus camera site - view of the dome, November 2004 through June 2005
[PDF Format, 47 M]
Changes in dome dimensions, January to July 2005
[PDF Format, 2 M]
Crater profile: Southeast-northwest profile of 1980-86 and the 2004-2005 lava dome, as of July 14, 2005
[PDF Format, 8 M]
Deformed crater floor: welt and glacier, October 2004 and March 2005
[PDF Format, 37 M]
Explosions, October 1, 2004 and March 8, 2005
[PDF Format, 37 M]
New technology - "Jaws" - Collecting dome rocks
[PDF Format, 15 M]
New technology - "SPIDERS" - Portable Telemetered Systems
[PDF Format, 37 M]
Remnants of Whalebacks, 2004-2005
[PDF Format, 20 M]
View from Johnston Ridge Observatory (JRO), June 15, 2005 to September 13, 2005
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View from Johnston Ridge Observatory (JRO), June 15, 2005 to September 13, 2005
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Mount St Helens eruption - one year anniversary

2005-09-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

It was one year ago today that Mount St Helens rumbled back to life and began a new eruptive phase. The USGS/CVO will be holding a press conference this morning to review the past years activity.

This morning the Volcanocam shows the crater to be clear with a small steam plume rising gently from the crater. Last night, the view was also clear and there were a few small outbursts of activity, although nothing particularly spectacular to celebrate today's anniversary.

Mount St Helens emerges from the clouds

2005-09-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

After several days of bad weather obscuring the view of the crater, the clouds parted this morning to give us a view of the glowing lavadome. There were only a couple of small outbursts of activity during the night. Hopefully this signals a change to clearer views of the mountain in the days to come.

Mystery glow on Mount St Helens just dodgy camera

2005-09-14T23:39:00.000-07:00

The anomalous glow seen on the Western Flank of Mount St Helens over the last couple of months is finally confirmed to be nothing more than defective pixels on the Volcanocam CCD camera.

On the 12th of September the lens on the Volcanocam was cleaned, and in the process the camera was moved slightly. So by looking at the images from the nights before and after the camera was moved clearly shows that the hot pixels in the image are in the same location in the frame, even though the view of the crater has changed.

The only explanation is that this is due to a defective pixel or pixels in the CCD and not any real hotspot on the crater wall. The evidence was beginning to favour this conclusion, but this now looks like the final word on the issue.

NASA confirms "spokes" in Cassini images.

2005-09-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

NASA has confirmed that the bright streaks seen in the Cassini images are indeed spokes similar to those seen by Hubble and Voyager!

Phobos and Deimos passing in the night

2005-09-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

The NASA Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, has captured images of the night sky on Mars and the passage of the two moons Phobos and Deimos for the first time. According to NASA, the night time astrophotography of Mars' two moons was possible by taking advantage of extra solar energy collected during the day. Spirit acquired these enhanced-brightness images with the panoramic camera on the night of sol 585 (Aug. 26, 2005).

"It is incredibly cool to be running an observatory on another planet," said planetary scientist Jim Bell of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., lead scientist for the panoramic cameras on Spirit and Opportunity.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ Texas A&M

Mount St helens puts on another good show

2005-09-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

The lavadome on Mount St Helens continues to crumble, producing rock falls and bright outbursts which are recorded on the Volcanocam images. Last night there were numerous outbursts from the crater, with the brightest occurring at 21:46, 23:11 and 05:46.

Cassini sees "spokes" on Saturn's rings?

2005-09-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

The Voyager spacecraft imaged dark "spokes" on the rings of Saturn, a feature that the Cassini probe hasn't seen so far.

Two new raw images from Cassini appear to show a similar spoke-like feature, although its bright, not dark like the images from Voyager - image#1, image#2.

The feature is in a similar location on the rings in the two images, but different locations on the image - so its probably not a artifact. Intriguing!

The clouds part and the mountain glows again

2005-08-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

Mount St Helens is clear of clouds this morning and there is a small plume rising above the crater rim visible on the Volcanocam images. Last night there was a good view of the crater with a small rock fall from the lavadome noticeable at 21:40 and then a much larger rockfall and bright outburst at 23:50, which corresponded to a larger tremor clearly visible in the SHW webicorder trace. A new animation of last nights display is available here.

Three tremors - three bright outbursts from the lavadome

2005-08-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

There were three bright outbursts of activity from the lavadome on Mount St Helens last night around 23:45, 00:25 and 03:40, which corresponded in time with tremors of magnitudes M2.8, M2.4, and M2.8.

According to the USGS the new lavadome continues to grow with the rate of addition of lava to the dome from mid-May to mid-June remained at about 1.5 cubic meters (2 cubic yards) per second. The high point of the lava dome (the actively growing spine) on June 15 was 2,335 meters (7,660 feet), but it is currently lower than that owing to the recent large rock falls from the spine. They have also posted a new animation of the lavadome growth from June 16 to August 16, compiled from images taken by the remote camera at the location called the Sugarbowl.

Another blast on the mountain

2005-08-26T07:10:00.000-07:00

While the overall levels of seismicity have been decreasing over the last few weeks, Mount St Helens continues to put on some impressive displays at night. Last night there was a bright outburst at 01:00, obviously due to a rockfall on the growing lavadome, exposing fresh hot rock to view.

Another blast of an evening...

2005-08-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

While Mount St Helens wasn't as active as Thursday night, it still put on an interesting show last night. There was a large outburst from the crater after 23:40, which also appeared to generate a large plume of dust and steam. See the movies here.

A spectacular display on Mount St Helens last night!

2005-08-19T07:04:00.000-07:00

The volcano gave a fine performance last night, with numerous bright outbursts illuminating the night sky around 21:20, 22:50 and 01:20. The larger outbursts were also associated with small dust/steam plumes that were illuminated by the reflected glow of the lavadome. New animations of last nights show are available here.

The incandescent glow appears

2005-08-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

On the 12th August USGS photographer Elliot Endo captured a sequence of images of the lavadome on Mount St Helens following the sunset.

Just for fun I have combined these images into a short animation - hopefully giving a sense of watching the incandescent glow appear as the night falls. After all, its interesting to see the details of that make up the diffuse brightness we see on the nightly Volcanocam images...

Zoom in on icy Enceladus

2005-08-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft made its closest appraoch to Saturn's moon Enceladus on the 14th July. The Cassini imaging team have combined the images from the flyby into an impressive animated movie that shows increasingly high-resolution views of this active and intriguing icy moon.

The Volcanocam's broke!

2005-08-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: The Volcanocam is working again!!! New images started apearing on the Volcanocam pages just after 10:30 this morning.

The US Forest Service Volcanocam has stopped transmitting images from the Johnson Ridge Observatory at Mount St Helens. The last image to be sent was from 18:35 on Friday night. The problem has occurred several times in the past and is presumably due to a communications failure between JRO and the web server. Unfortunately, the webmaster is away for two weeks starting last Wednesday, so it may be another week before its fixed...

There were a couple of larger tremors last night around 18:30 and 02:20 which are clearly visible on the St Helens - West webicorder trace and there was a M3.2 tremor at 18:10 on Friday night that was associated with a small plume of dust, and several other smaller tremors that night. However, until the communications problem is resolved, we won't know if this caused any heightened levels of activity during the night.

The USGS/CVO have just released a new movie of the growth/decay of the lavadome from the Sugarbowl camera - definitely worth a look!

My God, it's full of galaxies...

2005-08-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

The final words in Arthur C. Clarke's novel, 2001: A Space Odessy, were from Dave who exlaimed, "My God, it's full of stars!"

Looking at the new deep space image from the Hubble Space Telescope I was equally awestruck and felt like paraphrasing those wonderful words. Because apart from a dozen foreground stars, every bright spec in this image is a galaxy. Each with tens or hundreds of millions of stars of its own...

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Mark August 12th in your diary for the Perseid Meteor shower

2005-08-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks this week in the early hours of August 12th. But if you want to see one of the best meteor showers of the year, you will need to get up a couple of hours before dawn and look to the east!

And if the weather is bad, you can always listen to the meteors on this link to a meteor radar station in Roswell, New Mexico.

Mount St Helens - steady as she goes

2005-08-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

Over the last few nights the level of activity on Mount St Helens has been reasonably constant with only a few minor outbursts of activity. The reduced level of activity is a direct result of the Deterioration of the lavadome over the last month, as evidenced by the images from the Sugarbowl camera taken on 4 th August and 5th July. The lavadome has lost much of its structure due to ongoing rock falls, but extrusion of lava continues, so further interesting events are still likely over the coming months!

More tremors and another bright show on Mount St Helens

2005-08-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

The mountain was partially obscured by clouds in the early part of the evening and then again early this morning before sunrise. However, there have been two M3.0 tremors in the last 24 hours, and the one that occurred at 00:15 was associated with a bright outburst from the lavadome.

The danger of cleaning your digital SLR sensor

2005-07-31T15:14:00.000-07:00

One of the problems with a digital SLR camera which uses interchangeable lenses, such as my Canon 300D, is that dust can build up on the sensor. The first time this happened, the camera was still under warranty, so I sent it back to Canon Canada for cleaning. They did a reasonable job, but it took 6 weeks for them to send it back.

Since then there have been a number of cleaning kits released onto the market, one of the ones that has received the most praise from professional photographers is the Sensor cleaning system from Visible Dust of Edmonton. After reading a number of reviews (e.g. #1, #2, #3) about the Sensor Brush, Sensor Clean and Chamber Clean products, I decided to purchase all three products from a local retailer here in Vancouver.

After reviewing the instructions and sample videos on the Visible Dust website, I set up a workspace on the dining room table and set to work.

Before attempting to clean the sensor I took an image of the sensor before cleaning, which is shown below. To do this you take an image at the highest f-number you can of a uniform subject that's out of focus. I used a sheet of white paper and took the images with a Canon 100 mm macro lens at f32. The dust appears as the dark spots all over the image.

Original state of the sensor

After cleaning using the Sensor Brush 3 times, the treatment has removed a lot of the dust, but some appeared to be persistent. Remember that the dust is the small dark spots, not the hazy background, which is the result of the extreme adjustment of the levels in the image.

After cleaning with the Sensor Brush (x3)

So I decided to use the Sensor Clean option, which consists of a sterile polyester tipped swab and a proprietary cleaning solution supplied by Visible Dust. I followed the instructions to the letter, 2 drops of the liquid onto the swab then wipe the sensor and then using three more dry swabs clean off the entire area.

As you can see from the next image, it did remove a number of the persistent dust spots from the sensor. But notice the small dark line appearing on the left hand side of the image.

After cleaning with Sensor Clean

After seeing this dark spot appear, I once again examined the sensor and noticed that the line appeared to be between the sensor and the filter that sits on top of it. Because you are not actually cleaning the CCD sensor directly, there is an infra-red filter that is mounted on top of the CCD - this is where the dust accumulates.

Another shot of the sensor 30 minutes after the previous image

Taking another shot 30 minutes later, it was becoming obvious what had happened. A small amount of the sensor clean solution had run down between the CCD sensor and the infra-red filter which sits on top of it. Presumably, the filter wasn't completely sealed fully around its edges, allowing the liquid to penetrate under the filter. This last image shows the full extent of the damage.

Further images show the dark area has stopped growing and presumably the liquid has dried up. Not without leaving a large and disfiguring stain on the sensor.

Now this isn't going to be easy to resolve. In order to clean this stain away would require removing the infra-red filter from on top of the CCD and cleaning the CCD directly. This isn't something that I feel comfortable or qualified to do, the camera will be sent off to Canon to see if they can salvage it.

So my conclusion from this experience is that you need to be very careful about using any liquid cleaners on the CCD sensor of a digital SLR camera. Obviously there is a real danger of liquid creeping under the IR filter and causing what appears at the moment to be permanent damage.

I have also sent off a note to Visible Dust and will post any feedback I get from them.

UPDATE:

Below is a copy of the correspondence with Dr Degan of Visible Dust over this issue. I have removed e-mail addresses of individuals, but everything else is verbatim from the conversation. I will update as new responses are received.
--------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 31 Jul 05 23:27:49 +0000
From: Darryl Luscombe
To:  tech@visibledust.com,  wanda@visibledust.com,  info@visibledust.com
Subject: A problem using the Sensor Cleaning solution

I wanted to let you know that I have experienced a major problem with
using the sensor cleaning solution. It appears that a small amount of
the solution wicked down under the IR filter and spread between it and
the CCD sensor. I didn't read anywhere that this could be a problem with
using the Sensor Clean system, and would suggest that you may want to
advise people of the danger of using liquids to clean their sensors -
even when following you directions to the letter.

Full details are on posted my blog here:
http://dazza101.blogspot.com/05/07/danger-of-cleaning-your-digital-slr.html

Darryl Luscombe
Vancouver, BC

-----------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 31 Jul 05 17:59:46 -0600
From: Visible Dust 
Reply-To: support@visibledust.com
To: Darryl Luscombe
Subject: Re: A problem using the Sensor Cleaning solution

Hello Darryl

First of all, one has to make sure the conclusion that person is drawing
from his experience is the right one. I suggest to clean that smear using
another solution of ours which either could be smear away or chamber clean  
and applied on the sensor. They are more powerfull in removing the smear
caused by any method from the sensor.

One has to be really very careful in reaching conclusion with any one single
person experience and generalizing it. First of all, assume that conclusion
is correct and there is a gap, this is considered to be a DEFECT and the camera
should be taken back to canon for repair. *There should not be any gap in sealing*
as using even the bulb blower will force some dust underneath the cover glass.
So you are reaching a conclusion based on a defective sensor .

Just think for a second, if you have double layer window for insulation,
what happens if there is any gap, mositure will accumulate and the glass
indow becomes opaque and usless to see through. The same thing happens if
there is any gap between the sealing, the mositure and condensation will
appera under the cover glass if you start using your camera in winter time
eventually becomes useless, IS IT THE FAULT with sensor clean. of course
NOT. as a metter of fact one the advantages of sensor clean is that contrary
to methanol based cleaning solution that are GLUE REMOVER and can remove the
sealing , sensor clean is not. therefore this is considered to be one of the
advantages that is posted in our website.

So my conclusion is that first try to remove the smear first using other
solutions such as smear away as the sensor clean can not remove the smear,
once it was decided that this is due to the hole in sealing, this is
considered to be a defective sensor and camera should be taken to
manufacturer period. Even without cleanign you will have problem with this
kind of defect in future.

thanks technical Dr. Degan

--

Thank you for choosing Visible Dust to clean your sensor!
Visible Dust
P-780-455-1082
http://www.VisibleDust.com

----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:20:06 +0000
From: Darryl Luscombe
To:  support@visibledust.com
Subject: Re: A problem using the Sensor Cleaning solution

Dear Dr Degan,

Thanks for the prompt response.

However, I do not believe I am jumping to conclusions in my assessment
of what happened. The smear is not on top of the IR filter, and
continued to grow over a period of 30 minutes. This was obvious from
viewing the surface of the sensor in reflected light and the images I captured.

Also, I don't understand your contention that this is a smear on the
surface of the filter. The only liquid to touch the surface was Sensor
Clean and it supposedly is residue free and is not a "glue remover". So
I don't understand, by your own reasoning where this smear would have
come from, especially as it grew in a very liquid like fashion over the
course of 30 minutes. If it was a smear on the surface, the sensor clean
would have removed it, as it was still growing. (not static)

I agree that this may be due to a pinhole in the seal around the sensor,
but as you didn't warn that this could be a potential problem, I think
it is a real issue that should be acknowledged.

After all, Canon only recommends the use of a blower for cleaning the
sensor (or returning it to Canon). Perhaps their rationale for not
recommending third party solutions such as yours is that there is a
danger of liquid wicking down under the filter from small pinholes in
the seal. Which to my mind can't necessarily be considered a "defect" if
a liquid seal was never a design consideration in the first place, but a
dust seal may have been.

I have to say that I am disappointed by your response to this issue. I
also wish to point out that I haven't only mentioned Sensor Clean on my
blog, but rather that, "...my conclusion from this experience is that
you need to be very careful about using any liquid cleaners on the CCD
sensor of a digital SLR camera. Obviously there is a real danger of
liquid creeping under the IR filter and causing what appears at the
moment to be permanent damage."

Darryl

-----------------------------------------------------------
From: Visible Dust 
Reply-To: support@visibledust.com
To: Darryl Luscombe 
Subject: Re: A problem using the Sensor Cleaning solution

Hello Darryl

There should not be any hole in the sealing. The sealing should be tight and
liquid proof. This is manufacturer's problem and should be repaired by them.
 canon refers a lot of customer to us, as a matter of fact canon headquarter
in Netherland( Europe) is one of the centers that we get a lot of referral from.

My suggestion is take your camera to canon, DO NOT DRAW YOUR CONCLUSION, ask
them simply to clean it, what answer they can come up with, the sealing is
broken, this is not your fault, you discovered it. after all this is not
scratch. Broken sealing is considered to be a camera defect and should be
repaired by canon.

Even if you do not use any liquid, dust will eventually find its way under
the glass . If liquid can get under the glass so the moisture and so the
condensation and so the change in air pressure during the flight.

There should be no way liquid to get under the glass even if you immerse the
sensor in liquid , If it does therefore, the sensor is defective. The change
in air pressure will take dust under the glass too as you travel with the
camera in airplane. So the sensor should be sealed and tight.

thanks technical Dr. Degan

---------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 01:06:26 +0000
From: Darryl Luscombe 
To:  support@visibledust.com,  wanda@visibledust.com, 
tech@visibledust.com,  info@visibledust.com
Subject: Re: A problem using the Sensor Cleaning solution

G'day Dr Degan,

Sending my camera to Canon is something that I intend to do, but as it
is out of Warranty, any repairs won't be covered by Canon. In fact, such
repairs can be a major issue, as the cost of repairing or replacing a
CCD sensor, is not simple and may not be economic compared to the cost
of a replacement camera.

Despite your rationale for what has occurred, I would strongly suggest
that this issue is something that you should acknowledge on your website
and promotional literature. Even if your contention is that this is due
to a manufacturing defect (which I don't necessarily agree to), then
many of your customers may experience a similar problem using sensor clean.

I do not consider it acceptable behaviour for a company to simply
dismiss this potential problem of the use of their products as "someone
else's fault". I don't understand how you can be so certain that the
sealing should be "liquid proof". I have never seen anything from Canon
that would indicate that this is the case, or something that they
guarantee.

It appears that you are the person making assumptions here. I would
strongly suggest that you may need to warn people about the potential
consequences of using liquid cleaners on their DSLR cameras and the
possible damage that can ensue.

Darryl
------------------------------------------------

[No response so far...]

Update 21 October 2005

A Spectacular outburst on Mount St Helens

2005-07-31T10:42:00.000-07:00

There were two stronger tremors last night at Mount St Helens, one of which caused a spectacular outburst from the crater.

The first, at 23:09 was a M3.0 tremor that also caused a small outburst from the lavadome. The second occurred at 02:24 and was slightly stronger at M3.3 - but this tremor was associated with a spectacular outburst from the lavadome.

The USGS are this morning reporting that, Another large section of the spine at the north end of the growing lava dome collapsed overnight in a rockfall. An M=3.3 earthquake at about 2:34 a.m. this morning was the likely trigger.

Ever listened to a planet?

2005-07-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

No this isn't some new age conciousness expanding trippy thing, and I doubt you'll be able to dance to it, but scientists have released a recording of the sounds of the planet Saturn! These sounds were recorded by the Casini spacecraft last November and just released by the Radio and Plasma Wave Science team.

It's worth checking out as it definetely has an other worldly sense to it. Listen to a wav file of the sounds or listen and watch (requires java).

Mount St Helens rocks and rolls

2005-07-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

Over the last 24 hours there have been three tremors greater than magnitude three (M3.0, M3.0, M3.2) and another of M2.9 that also resulted in a bright outburst from the lavadome.

This morning finds clear weather on Mount St Helens. There is also quite of bit of dust being kicked up by small landslides all around the crater walls - something that seems to have become quite common over the last few days, especially in the morning.

The sun just burped - BIG Time!

2005-07-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

It looks like a big solar flare just erupted from the sunspot emerging over the sun's limb. This large mass of solar material is huge - the earth would only be a small dot on this image. It's probably the same sunspot that has been causing a string of large solar flares over the last week.

Looks like it is still capable of generating some big solar flares - which will hopefully mean some good aurora displays in the coming week or so...

Image Credit: NASA/SOHO