Seeing as the Earth is a puny nugget of metal seat atop a nearly 2000 statute mile - boneheaded mantle of high - pressure flowing rock music , it ’s no surprise that the rock at times ooze out , either tardily or explosively , through the open . It ’s fairly cool to see the magma glowing beside Sicily ’s nighttime lights , though .
NASA shared this icon of Italy ’s Mount Etna erupting today , after European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet post iton Twitterfrom the International Space Station :
The streaks from Etna ’s lava flow are visible in the bottom leave quarter-circle , isolated from the nearby glow of the 300,000 - person metropolis of Catania .
The tallest vent in Europe at over 10,000 feet ( 3,000 metre ) , Etna has been eruptingsince late February . It slowed down and flared up several times since then , most dramatically , in an explosioncaught on tapeby a BBC crew that injure ten last week .
This behavior is n’t fresh : Etna has in fact been ignite on and off for a very , very prospicient clock time . Records of observationsgo back two and a half millennium , and the volcano has been erupting on and off for hundreds of chiliad of years , volcanologist Keith Putirka , from California State University in Fresno , toldUSA Today . The vent likely exist as the resultant role of the African and Eurasian tectonic plate interact nearby , according to a paper release inNature .
So , go enjoy the view of some of our round Earth ’s incredible features from outer space , or wherever else you happen to be . Just do n’t get too close .
skill
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