For years, internet users have shared an image that appears to show a volcanic lava flow shaped like a phoenix that appeared to rise above a city at night. Captions that accompanied the image in many posts identified the location as Mount Etna in Sicily. A phoenix is a type of mythological bird that rises from the ashes after being consumed by fire.
Examples of posts featuring the image appeared on social media platforms including Reddit (archived), X (archived) and Threads. One Facebook reel showing the image amassed nearly 290,000 likes as of this writing.
(X user @MAstronomers/Davide Basile)
Commenters on some posts asked for more information about the image — including whether it was a genuine photograph or the work of artificial-intelligence software.
In short, the image was indeed a real photo of lava flowing from Mount Etna. Italian photographer Davide Basile captured it in July 2019 from Riposto, a coastal town just to the east of the volcanic Mount Etna in Sicily.
Basile confirmed to Snopes via Instagram message that he was the photographer who took the image, which he said he captured on the evening of July 19, 2019, from the Molo Costanzo, a jetty that emerges from Riposto's port.
He also said that he made no significant edits to the raw digital image beyond standard tweaks like adjusting the color balance — in other words, the
Mount Etna — the most active stratovolcano in the world, according to UNESCO — erupted continuously from September 2013 to September 2019, per the website of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Global Volcanism Program, which also noted that a lava flow emerged on the volcano's northeast side on July 18, 2019, and "lasted for several days."
Basile posted the photo to his Instagram the day after he took it. Since then, he said, numerous internet users have shared it without crediting him — even, in some cases, incorrectly crediting other photographers. Writing in Italian, he said, "Initially this really bothered me and I even argued with the people who did it, but then I resigned myself and I understood that if it had all these shares it was because people liked it and I had done a good job ... Maybe the photo itself is like the phoenix — it never dies."
We've previously looked into other claims about volcanoes, including whether a video authentically showed a 2023 eruption in Indonesia.