This is one of the first shots I took in Sicily with a tripod. I’d just arrived to a new WWOOF host near the Sicilian town of Acireale, and Mount Etna greeted me with a grumble, and a very rare view of fresh Magma spilling out of its crater at night. It was early February 2012 and quite a chilly evening, but my new hosts eventually managed to get me back inside with home-made Pizza…

I have some more pictures of Mount Etna erupting at night, but here I have cropped the same photo twice so you can see the crater and the magma in some detail, and the smoke from the eruption reaching up into the night sky. The trails of light in the crater were left by the glowing hot magma exploding in arcs, as my camera exposure was set to about 30 seconds.

Copyright Peter Parkorr 2013