After a brief spurt of activity on April 9th and 10th, 2011, Mounta Etna is relatively quiet again. Except for a thin ribbon of fresh lava, pristine snow covers the summit of the volcano in this natural-color satellite image. In addition to lava and ash (now hidden beneath snow), the eruption generated small pyroclastic flows. These flows were generated by the violent interaction between hot lava and deep snow.
The image was acquired on April 21, 2011 by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data. Caption by Robert Simmon.
