I have just been sat in the garden as it went dark tonight.
As I watched the clouds coming from the South they became orange and red. By 10.00pm the sky was filled with bright red clouds. Never seen this before, has anyone else seen this tonight?The wind is coming from the South and very warm here near Manchester, I wondered if the clouds contain sand granules from the deserts in Africa, but I have just been told that it may have something to do with the Russian Volcano. It was a spectacular sight!
The images shown are in the South taken with the Canon 350D at about 9.50pm tonight.
"The night skies over Britain will turn a deep shade of crimson this week as the fallout from a Russian volcano blast hits the UK.Millions of tonnes of dust, ash and sulphur dioxide were thrown up to 30 miles into the air when Sarychev Peak on Matua Island in the Kuril Archipelago erupted last month.The blast created what experts call a ‘volcanic aerosol’ - a colourful mixture of ash and sulphur compounds - in the stratosphere.This scatters an invisible blue glow which, when mixed with the red light of the setting sun, produces a ‘volcanic lavender’, or vivid crimson/violet hue.Strong winds blew the soaring plume more than 2,000 miles across the northern hemisphere before its effects were noticed in Britain last Thursday.
It is part of a chain of volcanic islands that run south from the Kamchatka Peninsula in the western Pacific Ocean.Commercial flights have been diverted away from the area to minimise the danger of engine failure from ash intake since the eruption on June 12.
During the eruption, the International Space Station passed overhead and astronauts were able to photograph the event.
A hole in the overhead clouds, possibly caused by the shock wave from the explosion, allowed a clear view of the plume and lava flow down the sides of the mountain.A cap-like mushroom cloud is visible atop the rising column.Sarychev Peak previously erupted in 1760, 1805, 1879, 1923, 1927, 1928, 1930, 1932, 1946, 1954, 1960, 1965, 1976, 1986 and 1989. "
