Sign up for free

Newsletters

Once a month
get new photos
and expert tips.

Photography
Main Photo Galleries Wallpapers Photo of the Day Photographers Photo Tips Buy Prints

Faial Island Eruption, Portugal, 1957

A column of black ash and steam rises over the village of Capelo on the Azores island of Faial. The source of this 1957 eruption, an undersea volcano just off Faial's southern shore called Ilha Nova, sent car-sized boulders into the air, covered Capelo in ash, and created a new island that eventually connected with Faial and lengthened the island by more than half a mile (0.8 kilometers).

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "A New Volcano Bursts From the Atlantic," June 1958, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by Robert F. Sisson