Volcanic Plume Over Southern Atlantic Ocean Revealed Through False-Color Imagery The South Sandwich Islands in the far southern Atlantic Ocean are often shrouded with thick cloud making it difficult to view the region from space. Sometimes however the use of false-color imagery can be used to reveal events that would otherwise be obscured under cloud cover. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASAs Aqua satellite flew over the South Sandwich Islands on April 19 2014 and acquired this false-color image of the cloudy scene. This false-color image uses a combination of non-visible (middle infrared and infrared) and visible (red) light captured in bands 7 2 and 1 respectively to distinguish clouds from snow and ice. Here the ice-covered islands appear bright turquoise the clouds light turquoise and the water in the ocean appears deep black. Because the volcanic plume is a moist mixture of gas and ash it reflects all three forms of light relatively well so it appears nearly white. In t about feed OPEN

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