Huge Tonga underwater volcano eruption captured in stunning satellite video | Live Science

A powerful underwater volcano eruption in Tonga on Saturday (Jan. 15) was captured as it happened in stunning images from an Earth-watching satellite, showing the sheer power for the explosive event in the South Pacific.

The volcano eruption on the island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai is visible as a spectacular explosion in views from the GOES West Earth-observing satellite operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A video of the eruption shows a vast plume from the volcano rising high into the atmosphere like a giant mushroom during the eruption as a shockwave extends outward from Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, one of the 170 islands that make up the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga.

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Nobody Saw This Volcano Erupt … Except NASA’s Satellites | Live Science

For the first time in 60 years, Mount Sourabaya erupted with a spectacular show of fiery lava — in fact, it erupted twice. But there wasn’t a single human soul who saw the eruptions live; nobody lives on the volcano’s remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, according to NASA Earth Observatory.

Instead, satellites captured images of the eruptions, which happened on April 24 and May 1, 2016, NASA reported.

Volcanic eruptions in far-flung places, such as the South Atlantic, used to go unnoticed. But the advent of satellites and seismic monitoring has given scientists new insight into volcanic events worldwide, NASA officials said.

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