A rare cloud-free window over one of the most remote volcanoes on the planet has reconfirmed that its summit crater is still glowing. Satellite imagery of Mount Michael, a stratovolcano rising from a wind-battered, ice-covered island in the South Atlantic, shows an infrared signal consistent with a lava lake that has stayed active for years. Only a handful of volcanoes worldwide are known to host this kind of long-lived molten pool, and Mount Michael’s isolation has made it one of the hardest to study. The latest picture, combined with three decades of accumulated satellite data, adds fresh confirmation to a discovery researchers first documented in 2019.
Landsat Catches a Rare Clear View of Mount Michael
Winter near the Antarctic Circle typically brings months of clouds and frozen darkness, hiding much of the region from orbit and choking surrounding waters with sea ice. But on August 24, 2026, skies cleared long enough for the Operational Land Imager aboard the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 satellite to capture Mount Michael, the volcano at the centre of Saunders Island, in natural colour. In the resulting image, drifting pieces of sea ice surround the snow-covered island, a reminder that the picture was taken just as the region’s harshest season began to loosen its grip. NASA Earth Observatory’s Michala Garrison compiled the image using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey, then overlaid it with an infrared signal, shown in red, that revealed heat radiating from the persistent lava lake inside the volcano’s summit crater. That signal came from a specific combination of shortwave and near-infrared bands, labeled bands 7-6-5, which are tuned to highlight temperature differences that ordinary daylight photography cannot show. A faint plume hovering over the peak, along with darkened snow on its northern slopes, pointed to activity beyond just the glowing crater itself.
A Lava Lake That Puts Mount Michael in Rare Company
Saunders Island belongs to the South Sandwich Islands, a roughly 350-kilometre (220-mile) chain of small volcanic peaks formed as the South American plate subducts beneath the much smaller South Sandwich plate. Regular eruptions have struck these islands for centuries, but a genuinely persistent lava lake, one that stays active for years rather than surging briefly during a single eruption, is a much rarer feature. Only a handful of other volcanoes on Earth are known to host similarly long-lived molten pools, among them Kīlauea in Hawaii, Nyamulagira in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Erta Ale in Ethiopia. NASA Earth Observatory first documented Mount Michael’s lava lake in 2019, and the latest imagery confirms the feature has kept glowing in the years since.
Three Decades of Satellite Data Behind the Discovery
Because Mount Michael sits in one of the most remote stretches of the South Atlantic, scientists studying it depend almost entirely on satellites rather than field visits. An analysis published in the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, led by volcanologist D.M. Gray and co-authors in 2019, examined thermal anomalies captured by Landsat, Europe’s Sentinel-2 satellite, and NASA’s ASTER instrument across thirty years of observations. That long record is what allowed researchers to conclude Mount Michael’s crater hosts a lava lake that persists rather than one that merely flares up during isolated eruptions, a distinction that is difficult to establish from a handful of images alone. The imagery gathered this year extends that record further still, adding two more cloud-free Landsat passes, taken about a week apart, to a dataset that already spanned three decades.
MIROVA and Aura Track the Volcano’s Ongoing Restlessness
Two additional instruments have kept a longer-term watch on the volcano between satellite passes. Thermal readings from the MODIS and VIIRS instruments feed into MIROVA, a near-real-time volcanic hot spot detection system, which shows low-intensity activity has continued at Mount Michael for the past several years without a major pause. Separately, observations from NASA’s Aura satellite show that emissions of sulfur dioxide and other gases are a common occurrence at the volcano, consistent with a crater that stays warm and active rather than dormant between isolated bursts. Taken together, the two monitoring systems give researchers a way to keep tabs on Mount Michael’s mood even during the long stretches when clouds make a direct optical view impossible.
A Week Later, Clouds Reveal the Wind Around Saunders Island
The clear skies over Mount Michael did not last. When Landsat 9 passed overhead again on September 1, 2026, a more active atmosphere had returned to the island. Rather than obscuring the scene entirely, the clouds put on their own display: the 843-metre-high (2,766-foot-high) peak disturbed the winds passing over it, producing a series of wave clouds that resembled the wake trailing behind a ship, a pattern regularly seen in this part of the South Atlantic. Separate false-colour imagery from NASA’s Aqua satellite suggested a volcanic gas track, caused by degassing sulfur dioxide, was likely present in the same area, underscoring how much of the island’s ongoing activity only becomes visible when the weather briefly cooperates.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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