Photo courtesy of Michael Crawford.

Seismologists Alan Linde and Selwyn Sacks, along with DTM’s Brian Schleigh, Michael Acierno, and Michael Crawford, captured on camera a spectacular lava fountain spewed by Mt. Etna, an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily.  The scientists are in Sicily to install 2 borehole strainmeters close to the volcano, and are working closely with Alessandro Bonaccorso and the Instituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Volcanolgia Sezione di Catania - Osservatorio Etneo.

The team expects that the sensitive borehole instruments will detect crustal deformation due to the magma movement that results in such eruptive activity.  By detecting deformation in the rocks before eruption, the measurements will help improve their understanding of the processes of magma movement in the volcano.  The lava fountain erupted on 23 October at about 9:00 p.m., sending lava sprays several hundred meters into the air, and was captured from a distance of about ten kilometers.