We don’t always think of our home planet as a target for space exploration, but of course it is. Satellites lofted into orbit by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration give us near-constant views of the Earth’s surface and its weather. Most of us are familiar with the weather sats that give us our daily, weekly, and monthly forecasts, so it’s not a big stretch to think of those types of instruments sensing things like volcanic eruptions or other changes on the Earth’s surface.

Mt. St. Helens, the volcano in Washington state, is putting on quite a show. You can, if you want to watch it all day long, open up a webcam view of the mountain, taken from an observation post about 5 miles way from the summit of the mountain. If you’re really into it, open up NOAA’s eye in the sky and follow the action from geosynchronous orbit.

It’s kind of cool to think that while we monitor Mars using the rovers and orbiters, we can do the same at Earth, using near-real-time satellite imagery and in-situ cameras on the ground.