Mount Vesuvius can be seen through a hole in the clouds in this image captured by the Landsat 8 satellite. The image was taken by Joshua Stevens/Landsat/NASA Earth Observatory.
Mount Vesuvius appears to "peer up" into the sky through an eerily circular hole in the clouds in this striking satellite image.
The photo was taken by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat-8 satellite. The summit caldera of the volcano is visible in the new image, as well as a remnant of Mount Somma, an ancient volcano that once stood.
The cone of Mount Vesuvius is built from the lava and ash from previous eruptions. It is part of the Campanian volcanic arcs, a string of volcanoes in Italy that sit on a boundary between plates, where the African plate is being subducted beneath the Eurasian plate. It is made up of multiple active, dormant and extinct volcanoes on land and underwater, including Mount Etna in Sicily, which began erupting again in February 2021, Live Science previously reported.
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The Roman city of Pompeii and Herculaneum were both destroyed by the most famous eruption of Vesuvius. The village of San Sebastiano was destroyed by lava flows in 1944. According to the Earth Observatory, Mount Vesuvius has had eight major eruptions in the last 17,000 years.
Mount Vesuvius is still classified as an active volcano despite being calm since its last eruption. The volcano is considered to be one of the most dangerous on the planet because it is close to Naples, which is home to more than 3 million people.
The view from the Landsat 8 satellite shows the Mount Vesuvius volcano in Italy. The image was taken by Joshua Stevens/Landsat/NASA Earth Observatory.
A study published in the journal Nature described Mount Vesuvius as Europe's "ticking time bomb."
The Landsat-8 satellite is run by both NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.
Live Science published the original article.
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