That's where she blasts!
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| On February 18, 2021, Mount Etna erupts as seen from space. (Data from the US Geological Survey's Landsat satellite) |
During a
series of eruptions captured by a slew of Earth-orbiting satellites, Mount Etna
has been spewing lava across Sicily for weeks.
Since
2011, Etna, Europe's most active volcano, has been on the verge of erupting.
The most recent season started on February 16th. That day, Feb. 18, and again
between Feb. 20 and 23, the volcano erupted. Lava fountains shot high into the
night sky during these eruptions, reaching a height of 0.4 miles (0.7
kilometers) earlier in the month and 0.9 miles (1.5 kilometers) over the
volcano's summit later in the month.
According
to Marco Neri, a volcanologist, the most recent eruptions were among the most
violent in the Southeast Crater's short history.
The smoke,
ash, and lava ejected by the volcano piqued the interest of Earth-observing
satellites. On Feb. 18, the NASA-USGS Landsat 8 satellite's Operational Land
Imager (OLI) captured a natural color view of the volcano, which was overlaid
with infrared data to display the warm areas (or spots where lava had broken
through).
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| Mount Etna in Italy, one of the world's most active volcanoes, is seen erupting in this picture taken from space. The image was taken on Feb. 18 by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission of the European Space Agency, which is made up of two separate orbiting Earth-observing satellites. The volcano erupted twice in less than 48 hours, spewing ash and spouting a lava fountain on February 16 and 18, respectively. (Image credit: Copernicus Sentinel data (2021) updated by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO) |
On the
same day, the eruption was detected by the European Space Agency's Copernicus
Sentinel-2 flight, which consists of two satellites. Using infrared imagery,
European satellites caught a moment in which the lava was bright orange and
red.
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| On February 23, 2021, Mount Etna erupted, as seen by VIIRS on NOAA-20. (Image credit: Joshua Stevens of NASA Earth Observatory, using VIIRS day-night band data from the Joint Polar Satellite System) |
On Feb.
23, as Etna erupted once more, the NOAA-20 satellite of the US National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration captured an image with its VIIRS (Visible
Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument that shows the plumes emerging
from the volcano.
According
to NASA, although these recent eruptions were impressive, they only caused
minor disturbances rather than significant damage to the local region. The
Catania Airport was temporarily closed due to ash from Mount Etna, which was
scattered across Sicily, and local people had to deal with dropping ash and
rocks.
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