Volcanoes are awesome forces of nature. They can be intimidating when erupting and even beautiful when seen from a safe vantage point on the ground. Satellite views give us a very different perspective on an eruption. NASA shared an eye-opening look at Italy’s Mount Etna in mid-eruption as seen by the Landsat 8 satellite on Feb. 13. The satellite caught sight of a remarkable “river of fire.”
Mount Etna’s latest unrest kicked off on Feb. 8 with some telltale rumblings. Eruptions aren’t unusual for the volcano. “But the fiery explosions, disruptive ash clouds and long lava flows that ensued stood out as being unusually spectacular to many Etna watchers,” NASA said.
Mount Etna From Space
NASA’s Earth Observatory, a site dedicated to public outreach about our planet, posted the satellite picture as an image of the day on Feb. 20. The top-down view peeks through the clouds at Mount Etna. Gray, ash-stained snow appears below a volcanic plume. It’s a dramatic scene.
The bright-red streak NASA described as a “river of fire” isn’t what you would see with the naked eye. “The natural-color scene is overlaid with an infrared signal to distinguish the lava’s heat signature on Etna’s snowy slopes,” the space agency said. The flow was measured at about 2 miles in length at the time of the image. The lava river traces to a fissure at the base of the volcano’s Bocca Nuova crater, according to a report from the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Volcanism Program.
Landsat 8, a collaboration between NASA and the United States Geological Survey, was launched in 2013. The mission monitors land and water use and supports disaster evaluations and responses. Earth-observing satellites are helpful with tracking lava flows and airborne ash and gases from volcanoes. This information can keep people safe both on the ground and in the air.
Drone View Of Mount Etna
Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) shared drone footage of Etna’s most recent lava flow on Feb. 17. A video shows both a thermal view and an optical view of the area. The smoldering lava looks gray to the naked eye, but the hot areas pop out in the thermal view.
Mount Etna is one of the world’s most active stratovolcanoes. Stratovolcanoes have a conical shape and steep sides formed from layers of volcanic material. Mount Hood in Oregon and Mount St. Helens in Washington are well-known stratovolcanoes in the United States.
A volcano’s mood swings can impact the world around it. Etna’s ash plumes sometimes result in airplane diversions. It inevitably simmers down again.“The eruption was ongoing as of February 18, with weak ash emissions and decreasing explosive activity,” NASA said.
Mount Etna has a long track record.“The eruptive history of the volcano can be traced back 500,000 years and at least 2,700 years of this activity has been documented,” said UNESCO’s entry for Mount Etna on the agency’s World Heritage List.
Satellites have advanced the way Mount Etna is documented. The images are both beautiful and informative. The ash from the recent eruption has been more of a concern than the lava, but the lava makes for a stunning view from space with a little help from infrared data.
