Powerful eruption of Italy's Mount Etna volcano seen from space

Sicily's Mount Etna erupted last week with a dense column of ash and smoke thrown thousands of feet in the air as satellites looked on from above.The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured the dramatic event from space as a massive plume of ash, gas and rock suddenly burst from Europe's largest active volcano.Mount Etna is one of the world's most active volcanoes, but there hasn't been an eruption of this magnitude since 2014, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology Observatory.
The image here clearly depicts the lava flow and huge plume of smoke and ash. (Photo: ESA)
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Italy's INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the spectacle on Europe's most active volcano was caused when part of the southeast crater collapsed, resulting in hot lava flows. It was the 14th eruptive phase in recent months.The area of danger was confined to the summit of Etna, which was closed to tourists as a precaution, according to Stefano Branca, an INGV official in Catania.The observatory reported that preliminary observations show a partial collapse of the northern flank of the volcano's southeast crater. The image taken from space shows the lava flow and a huge plume of smoke and ash. The plume contained large amounts of sulphur dioxide that were emitted into the air.The event was captured in video and photos that went viral on social media. Videos showed tourists running along a path on the flank of the vast volcano with smoke billowing some distance in the background. Excursions are popular on Etna, which is some 3,300 meters (nearly 11,000 feet) high, with a surface area of some 1,200 square kilometers.advertisementMeanwhile, tremors from the eruption were widely felt in the towns and villages on Mount Etna's flanks, Italian media reported.

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