Perspective View, Mt. Etna, Italy & the Aeolian Islands

Italy's Mount Etna and the Aeolian Islands are the focus of this perspective view made from an Advanced Spaceborne Thermal and Emission Radiometer (ASTER) image from NASA's Terra spacecraft overlaid on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) topography. The image is looking south with the islands of Lipari and Vulcano in the foreground and Etna with its dark lava flows on the skyline. Vulcano also hosts an active volcano, the cone of which is prominent. In late October 2002, Etna erupted again, sending lava flows down the north and south sides of the volcano. The north flows are near the center of this view, but the ASTER image is from before the eruption. In addition to the terrestrial applications of these data for understanding active volcanoes and hazards associated with them such as lava flows and explosive eruptions, geologists studying Mars find these data useful as an analog to martian landforms and geologic processes. In late September 2002, a field conference with the theme of Terrestrial Analogs to Mars focused on Mount Etna allowing Mars geologists to see in person the types of features they can only sample remotely. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03370