Launched in February and now 438 miles above the Earth's surface, NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission satellite took several photos of an erupting Indonesian volcano.

A NASA satellite has demonstrated that the best place to view an erupting volcano is from 438 miles straight up.

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On April 29, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission satellite passed over Indonesia's Flores Sea and snapped several shots of Paluweh island, the scene of a volcanic eruption in progress.

Two of the satellite's instruments imaged the volcano, which awoke last October. The Operational Land Imager, which detects visible light, as well as infrared, and short-wave electromagnetic radiation, snapped a photo of the smoke and ash spewing from the volcano. The Thermal Infrared Sensor captured the heat from the lava.

"Each instrument by itself is magnificent," said Betsy Forsbacka, the thermal sensor's manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a press release. "When you put them together, with the clues that each give you on what you're seeing on Earth's surface, it's greater than either could do by themselves."

NASA said the thermal sensor was able to pick out the actual lava flow from the cooler surrounding areas. It can also tell differences in temperature as slight as one-tenth of a degree Celsius.

"We can image the white, representing the very hot lava, and right next to it we image the gray and black from the cooler surrounding ash," Forsbacka said. "It's exciting that we're imaging such diverse thermal activity so well."

A collaboration between NASA and the US Geological Survey (USGS), the satellite launched on Feb. 11, 2013. It joins the Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites, which have been in orbit since 1984 and 1999 respectively, to produce stunning photos of Earths surface along with an abundance of scientific data.

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NASA satellite snaps spectacular images of volcanic eruption