Astronaut spots Mount Vesuvius from space | Space photo of the day for June 8, 2026

Mount Vesuvius as seen from space in 2026. (Image credit: ESA/NASA – S. Adenot) French astronaut Sophie Adenot captured the view of a lifetime in a new image of Mount Vesuvius, as seen from aboard the International Space Station. What is it? Adenot, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, is currently part of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) alongside NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The crew arrived in February and is slated to complete a six-month stay in space. The crew did take a brief detour from their regular duties, however, on June 5 — temporarily taking shelter in the Dragon capsule during a spacewalk meant to fix a concerning leak on the station. And before this temporary sheltering, on Day 103 (orbit 1598) of their mission, Adenot captured a striking photograph of Mount Vesuvius from the space station and shared it on social media . Why is it incredible? "From orbit, volcanoes are some of the most beautiful natural sights… End of April, 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. I just had time to take a quick photo, but I kept an eye out for it the next day to capture a few more! A special thought for my fellow ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, who is from Catania, at the foot of Etna," Adenot's post read, according to ESA . …