Abstract
Abstract. Muography offers us a tool to observe hazardous erupting volcanoes remotely. However, practical muographic observations of volcanoes from a distance are difficult; therefore, various observations have been performed in the vicinity (< 1.5 km) of volcano peaks to suppress background noise and enhance images. In this study, we created a muographic image directly beneath the caldera floor of the erupting Shinmoe-dake volcano in Japan by locating our muography telescope 5 km from the peak. The Shinmoe-dake volcano began to erupt on 19 January 2011 and, in less than 1 month, the ejected lava almost completely filled the caldera and completely changed the topography of the caldera floor. The resultant image shows a low-density region underneath the western part of the newly created caldera floor, which indicates the existence of a void there. After the volcano became less active in February 2011, infrequent eruptions might have left a void beneath the caldera floor, which may trigger a collapse in the future. We anticipate that our novel muography will be a practical tool for monitoring and predicting eruption sequences in the near future.
Highlights
To date, one of the keys to successful volcano muography that directly contributes to the understanding of the eruption dynamics has been to shorten the time required for capturing a practical radiographic image of an erupting volcano (Tanaka, 2014)
Our muography telescope is described in detail in a separate paper (Tanaka et al, 2014); we briefly introduce our apparatus
Data collected at the Satsuma–Iwo Jima volcano were reanalyzed because the data were collected using the same type of the detector 1.4 km from the peak
Summary
One of the keys to successful volcano muography that directly contributes to the understanding of the eruption dynamics has been to shorten the time required for capturing a practical radiographic image of an erupting volcano (Tanaka, 2014). Tanaka et al (2014) reduced electromagnetic background events by adding redundant detectors and radiation shields to a conventional muography telescope (e.g., Tanaka and Yokoyama, 2013), thereby improving the time resolution. Cârloganu et al (2013) located their telescope at a distance of 2 km from the peak of the Puy de Dôme volcano, they reported that the background noise dominated the muon flux when the rock thickness exceeded 1 km. Such short-range muography is practical when the target volcanoes are dormant or less active
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