Few people have seen the iconic Mt Vesuvius – famed for burying the Roman city of Pompeii in AD79 – and Mt Etna – an active stratovolcano on the island of Sicily – like French astronaut Sophie Adenot.
From aboard the International Space Station (ISS), where she’s currently 119 days into a 9-month stint, Adenot has perhaps the most awe-inspiring views of the iconic peaks, which, fortunately for us, she recently photographed and shared with the world.
On day 103 in space, during her 1,598th orbit of the Earth, the astronaut pressed the shutter of her Nikon Z9 while peering into the crater of the dormant Vesuvius, which, from space, appeared nothing more than a pimple. She captured Mt Etna less than a minute earlier, its snow-capped peak billowing smoke.
“From orbit, volcanoes are some of the most beautiful natural sights,” said Adenot in an ESA statement. “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.”
Adenot was working with a Nikon Nikkor Z 400mm f/2.8 TC VR S telephoto lens, but snapped both images at a 560mm focal length, so she had switched in the in-built teleconverter to crop in that bit closer. All of the frame in both images is sharply in focus and that’s thanks to an f/14 aperture, with plenty of sunlight and an ISO 500 used for correct exposure.
This is Adenot’s first mission to space and she’s wasted no time in documenting the experience on camera.
Part of the ESA εpsilon mission which blasted off in the SpaceX Dragon capsule, she’s captured plenty of candid portraits of her teammates NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, along with scenes of her native France.
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