A Sicilian volcanic eruption photographed from the space station
Mount Etna, which has a long rap sheet of eruptions stretching back more than 2,700 years, is still at it.
ESA/NASA
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Mount Etna, which has a long rap sheet of eruptions stretching back more than 2,700 years, is still at it. The 3,300-meter volcano on the island of Sicily remains a highly active volcano, erupting several times in just the past decade.
As the International Space Station cruised over southern Europe on January 14, Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency got a firsthand look at his home country's tallest volcano. Nespoli snapped the above photograph from orbit, about 350 kilometers above Earth. Etna's plume is visible trailing off to the left; the landmass on the right side of the image is the tip of the Italian mainland.
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