Sunrise and sunset chasers discovered something odd this summer: In rural Colorado and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, Earth’s daily light shows were turning purple. Now, weather balloons probing the stratosphere have traced the mysterious purple light to a volcanic eruption in Russia.

This giant volcano is very much alive

Even after a 220,000-year break, the caldera can get rolling in just a few years. By Scott K. Johnson.

What can be done to prepare Naples for the volcano in their midst?

At noon on August 24, 79 A.D. the peak of Mount Vesuvius exploded, propelling a 10-mile mushroom cloud of ash and pumice into the stratosphere. For the next 12 hours, volcanic ash and a hail of pumice stones up to 3 inches in diameter showered Pompeii, forcing the city’s occupants to flee in terror. Some 2,000 people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption.

The wind shifts. The stench of rotten eggs makes it nearly impossible to breathe and the hot fog clouds my view. I hold my breath and close my eyes, imagining the fog growing thicker, crushing me. Then without warning the wind clears and I’m enveloped once again in the cold, dry air. The heat feels like a lost dream. I shiver as I analyze my surroundings.

Impressive footage of a volcano eruption used in the BBC series Patagonia: Earth’s Secret Paradise has been revealed as fake. According to The Observer, the BBC admitted the scene was created by merging two separate eruptions from two separate volcanoes together - one from 2011 and one from 2015 - even though the programme suggested the eruption was a single occurrence.

There’s something about volcanoes that brings out the worst in your modern creationist. They’re willfully ignorant about plenty of things, and surely do love viewing science through a funhouse mirror, but most of them (ACE excepted) do manage to avoid mangling some of the science. Some of it even sounds downright secular in places. But they’ve got this really odd complex about volcanoes. They lose their shit to such an extent that they can’t even get basic facts straight.

Maly Semyachik is a stratovolcano located in the eastern part of Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. Three overlapping stratovolcanoes were constructed sequentially along a NE-SW line, with the youngest cone, Tseno-Semyachik, at the southwest end. A hot, acidic crater lake fills the historically active Troitsky Crater, which formed during a large explosive eruption of Ceno-Semiachik about 400 years ago.

Europe's Mount Etna and Nicaragua's Momotombo both erupted spectacularly in this first week of December, 2015.

Geologists have long-known that continental crust forms when liquid, hot magma bubbles up from deep within the Earth, but have been debating on just how that happens.

Photographed by Abdul Azis.

The Tungurahua volcano spews fumes and lava in Huambalo, Ecuador, Feb. 27, 2016.

France's iconic Chauvet cave holds mysterious spray-shaped imagery, made around the time when nearby volcanoes were spewing lava. By Ewen Callaway. (Jan. 15)

Pavlof is one of the most consistently active volcanoes in the Aleutian Islands

In a remote and desolate landscape, the rocks are tearing themselves in two beneath your feet and new land is being born

Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano spewed a large column of ash and vapor Tuesday afternoon. (March 30)

A photo from an astronaut on the space station shows four magnificent Alaskan volcanoes poking out of the clouds.

Matthew Teller roams Ascension Island, a volcanic outpost of empire where it's hot and cold at the same time - and nobody's sure who's in charge.