Bubbles Bubbles

Maybe the moments I love most when Etna goes through a new episode of lava fountaining (known also as "paroxysm") are those at the end of such a fountain, because that's when the sound levels rise beyond anything heard before, and sometimes, rather than stopping abruptly with a massive roar, these paroxysms pass into a seemingly endless series of huge explosions. These explosions are generated by the bursting of immense bubbles of cooling magma at the top of the magma column slowly sinking back into the conduit. They throw out huge expanding balls of meter-sized, glowing lava bombs that spread out fan-like, rising sometimes hundreds of meters into the air, and then impacting the ground up to more than 1 km from the crater.

During the current sequence of lava fountaining episodes, which started in January 2011 at the New Southeast Crater of Etna, we have seen this phenomenon at the end of only three out of 20 episodes - on 19 July and 25 July 2011, and once again on 9 February 2012. In the latest event, the phase of exploding bubbles was during daybreak, and so I saw it with the most gorgeous light and colors that one can imagine. This videoclip offers a somewhat pale idea of what it really was - but there are a few fine explosions in it, especially the one at time 02:33. Unfortunately, the sound is dominated by wind (the detonations caused by the explosions became much louder some time later, and were more conspicuous at a greater distance from the volcano) and by noises coming from work in a nearby quarry. Yet, this is some of the most gorgeous sights you can expect to see during The Greatest Show On Earth, which is Etna's lava fountains.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Etna
• volcano
• lava
• fountain
• explosions
• bubbles
• eruption
• paroxysm
• 2012

[drixc1]

awesome paroxysm!

Etna is wonderful

Where are you filming from? What distance I mean?

[biondino020511]

Grazie per il tuo apporto sempre esaustivo ... :-) bellissimo !!