An enormous, towering ash cloud was thrown up above the glowing plume of lava that spouted from the Kīlauea volcano in Hawaiʻi, US as Jeri Gertz (Member 53,565) watched its most recent eruption.
 
The very hot volcanic ash rose rapidly, and as it did so, it lifted and therefore cooled a layer of moist, stable air overhead, causing some of its moisture to condense into a white band of cloud. The hot column of ash then proceeded to pierce the cloud as it continued its rise. The result was an accessory cloud known as velum. Its name comes from the Latin for a ship’s ‘sail’ or the ‘flap’ of a tent. Next to the grey volcanic material in the ash cloud, the water droplets made the velum formation look white, pure – and, in Jeri’s words, ‘otherworldly and beautiful’.