The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image of the ongoing eruption at Iceland’s Holuhraun lava field on September 16, 2014. The lava is hot enough to glow in near-infrared light, so it appears red in the image, which displays near-infrared, red, and green wavelengths as red, green, and blue respectively.
For daily updates about the eruption, visit the Icelandic Met Office website. Find a gallery of satellite imagery of the eruption here.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using data from NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team. Caption by Adam Voiland.