The NASA Earth Observatory has taken some stunning high resolution images of an eruption from the Puyehue-Cordón Caulle Complex in Chile that consists of four different volcanoes.  Ash plumes have reached two to four kilometers in altitude and have drifted 90 to 320 kilometers downwind affecting surrounding areas including forests, farmlands and resorts.

The most recent image from the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) of the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite was taken 26 January 2012.

This is another image of the region from 23 December 2011.  The volcano erupted violently last June (causing the evacuation of thousands of people), but ash and steam continued to escape from a fissure that opened several months earlier.

Map showing location of the four volcanoes that make up the Puyehue Cordón Caulle Complex.

Links

Volcano Discovery – http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/puyehue/news.html

Video of volcano eruption up close (BBC News) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13774045

More images of eruption from NASA Earth Observatory – http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/event.php?id=50859

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