In the pantheon of awesome images of explosions, this has got to rank pretty high. Astronauts floating high above earth in the International Space Station snapped this shot of Russia's Sarychev Peak volcano in the Kuril Islands busting through the atmosphere on June 12 (click on the image for full-size).
As NASA scientists M. Justin Wilkinson writes, conditions had to be perfect to get this shot -- there must be almost no wind for the plume to shoot so high into the atmosphere undisturbed.
The white stuff at the top of the ash cloud is probably condensing steam. And that halo of clouds surrounding the eruption is what happens when a powerful explosion rips into the atmosphere -- the shock wave literally pushed the cloud cover out of the way.
(Image: NASA Earth Observatory)
