Image: The eruption of the Stromboli volcano in Italy

A volcano on the Italian island of Stromboli erupted early Sunday morning, sending huge plumes of smoke and lava flowing into the sea. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captured this image of the aftermath less than five hours after the eruption.

The an eruption caused a partial collapse of the crater terrace, after which large lava flows reached the sea and huge plumes of smoke rose several hundred meters above the volcano. Italy’s civil defense authorities have raised the danger level from yellow to orange as “a situation of heightened volcanic imbalance persists”.

This Sentinel-2 image has been natural color processed using the short-wave infrared channel to highlight the new lava flow. Sentinel-2 is based on a constellation of two identical satellites, each carrying an innovative high-resolution multispectral imager with 13 spectral bands to monitor changes in Earth’s land and vegetation.

The northernmost island of the Aeolian archipelago, located near the northern tip of Sicily, Stromboli volcano has been erupting almost continuously for the past 90 years.