By James Van Howe
Photo from Marco Fulle, National Geographic Daily News
This post originally appeared on Jim’s Cleo Blog and is reproduced with permission from its author.
In the lead-up to CLEO I have been trying to do some work in the MID-IR wavelength range. I have been waiting for some CaF2 lenses that were due to arrive a few days ago only to find that they were held up by the ash plume from Eyjafjallajokull’s recent eruptions. It turns out that the distribution center from where my lenses were to be shipped is in Germany.
Searching the news for more information, I learned about the woes of poor stranded European travelers (rock stars, film-makers and pro-wrestlers included; it seems ash plumes don’t discriminate),how to pronounce the name of the Icelandic volcano that caused all of this trouble (by the way it is EY-ya-fyat-lah-YOH-kuht), debate among officials about the safety of flying through ash plumes, but most interesting to the scientist in me, volcanic lightning…read the full post by clicking here.
Additionally, check out blogger David Nugent’s informative post regarding the possibilities of using LIDAR for mapping Eyjafjallajokull’s commerce-halting cloud.
Posted: 15 May 2010 by
James Van Howe
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