The Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam unexpectedly captured a bright light on the west flank of the volcano on two successive evenings, May 03-04, and again on May 04-05, 2005.
The above image is an annotated composite image. It was created by veteran VolcanoCam watcher Darryl Luscombe of Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. Darryl creates nighttime movies from the VolcanoCam images so we can see the nightly glow from the incandesence of hot lava from the new dome. Darryl was kind enough to show us how to make nighttime movies back in October, 2004, which are available in our Movies Archive.
From the first night's observations we determined the bright light was probably caused by a pixel glitch within the VolcanoCam itself. (The USGS and the University of Washington Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network confirm the bright light is not caused by volcanic activity.)
Whether this glitch is only temporary, intermittent or permanent remains to be seen. We do not know if this glitch will increase over time so as to crash the camera.
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/archive/hall-of-fame/20050505-bright-light.shtml
