English: The triangular-shaped island of Sicily sits at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, positioned roughly 100 miles (160 km) north of Tunisia, in north Africa, and just 2 miles (3 km) from the southern tip of mainland Italy. This strategic location has placed the Mediterranean’s largest island at the crossroads of history for many thousands of years and through a variety of civilizations. The island has been inhabited for at least 10,000 years.

On February 22, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of Sicily surrounded by the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, colored in green, and the highest peaks topped with winter snow.

In the east, a light gray plume can be seen rising from Sicily’s most iconic feature, Mount Etna, and blowing towards the southeast over the Mediterranean. Standing at 3,329 meters high (10,922 feet), the volcano is in almost continuous eruption. In late November 2022 a new fissure vent opened on Etna’s southeast crater, permitting lava to flow and beginning a new effusive eruption. On February 8, 2023, the volcano observatory in Catania released a bulletin for aviation services mentioning that the effusive eruption at the summit craters had ended. Low level activity above background levels have continued, with very little ash emission. The light gray plume captured in this image is likely primarily volcanic gases with little ash.