Northern Lights appear above ash plume in Iceland

The Daily Mail online has posted some spectacular photos of the Iceland volcano with the aurora borealis shimmering above it: Iceland volcano: Northern Lights appear above ash plume.

A sample:

From Reuters

Volcano in Iceland

The Fimmvoruhald volcano erupting at Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull glacier, earlier this week. (Don't ask me to pronounce either name - when I listen to Eyjafjallajökull being pronounced via Slate or Wikipedia, it sounds very little like what it looks like).

I was living in Seattle in 1980 when Mount St. Helens blew (see the website for the Mount St. Helens National Volcano Monument for more information).

The winds never blew the ash cloud into Seattle, but Portland was hit several times by the ash when the wind blew in the right direction. It was still very dramatic - you could see the huge column of ash for a long time from Seattle. I never did visit the volcano, but one of the tourist souvenirs one could buy soon afterwards were little glass vials of volcano ash. I bought one but have no idea what happened to it.