A hot fist of steam and ash punches through the cloud cover above the Sarychev volcano on Matua Island, part of the remote Kuril Islands chain off Russia and Japan. Crew members on the International Space Station captured this image on June 12, 2009, soon after the mountain burst open. Over three days the ash column topped 50,000 feet, diverting air travel as debris and sulfur dioxide belched skyward.

The smooth white cap atop the plume is likely a pileus cloud—a transient puff of condensation that forms when a climbing air mass cools above an ash column. But the cloud peephole is an enigma. It may have resulted from the eruption’s shock wave, or from evaporation as air sank and warmed around the plume. Or perhaps it was simply a lucky window onto the epic blast. —Jennifer S. Holland

Photo: Erupting periodically since 1760, Sarychev Peak is now one of the Kuril Islands’ most active volcanoes.

Photography by Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA/Johnson Space Center

For eight days a year Black Rock City becomes one of Nevada’s biggest towns, with a population rivaling that of the capital, Carson City. It even has an airport and department of motor vehicles. The ad hoc municipality arises in the Black Rock Desert to host 50,000 campers who attend the Burning Man counterculture festival the week before Labor Day. The event began in 1986 as a San Francisco art experiment cum beach party and moved to the desert in 1991 as crowds grew. Despite Burning Man’s tradition of nudity and drugs, police make few arrests. At the center of the five-square-mile city is a 70-foot-tall wooden effigy, set ablaze at week’s end. The town vanishes too, says founder Larry Harvey: “No roads, no buildings, no trash—as if we were never there.” —Peter Gwins

Photo: Nevada’s Black Rock City shapes up as a semicircle (for better desert views) with a five-sided security fence. Ikonos satellite image courtesy Geoeye. 

Just north of Mexico in the Arizona desert, a crimson-hued pond is a reminder of past mining wealth and current pollution. Up to hundreds of yards long, with a service road jutting onto a promontory, it holds storm water that fell on mine tailings—crushed rock largely stripped of valuable metal. Oxidation causes the Technicolor effect. Phelps Dodge mined copper in Bisbee for decades, until profits dried up in the mid-1970s. Under state order, the company must improve contaminated groundwater caused by high sulfate levels in now flooded underground mines. It also hopes to restore the landscape to a normal tint by late 2010. —Chris Carroll