French astronaut Sophie Adenot captured the view of a lifetime in a new image of Mount Vesuvius, as seen from aboard the International Space Station.
What is it?
Adenot, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, is currently part of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) alongside NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The crew arrived in February and is slated to complete a six-month stay in space. The crew did take a brief detour from their regular duties, however, on June 5 — temporarily taking shelter in the Dragon capsule during a spacewalk meant to fix a concerning leak on the station.
And before this temporary sheltering, on Day 103 (orbit 1598) of their mission, Adenot captured a striking photograph of Mount Vesuvius from the space station and shared it on social media.
Why is it incredible?
“From orbit, volcanoes are some of the most beautiful natural sights… End of April, Etna caught me by surprise one morning as I opened the shutters. The whiteness of its slopes… and that elegant plume of smoke which is a gentle reminder that it’s only lightly, very lightly, asleep. I just had time to take a quick photo, but I kept an eye out for it the next day to capture a few more! A special thought for my fellow ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, who is from Catania, at the foot of Etna,” Adenot’s post read, according to ESA.
“Less than a minute later, and we’re flying over Vesuvius, instantly recognisable by the vast crater, the path winding up to the summit, and, most of all, Naples spread out all around it,” she continued.