Drone Captures Fascinating Volcano Eruption In Iceland

It’s an interesting time for photographers, with previously unavailable technologies allowing them to capture breathtaking never-before-seen imagery. The footage below captured by drone manufacturer DJI is one such example.

Too dangerous for a manned aircraft, a drone was the safest bet when a DJI team decided to capture footage of the erupting Bárðarbunga volcano in Iceland. Geophysicist for the National Icelandic Civil Protection, Bjorn Oddsson, told ABC News, “The volume of the lava is the largest we’ve seen in Iceland for 230 years.”

And check this out: the camera flew so low into the fissure that the GoPro camera attached to the drone literally melted — its lens turned into a jelly blob on the front of the camera body (though luckily, the SD card was salvaged). Because of DJI built-in technology, the device was able to detect trouble and fly itself back to a landing point, saving this magnificent footage from being lost in the belly of the volcano.

“The fact that you can take a $1,000 flying camera and put it in the middle of an erupting volcano to capture wide-angle views of this giant pool of molten lava, which is exploding and throwing lava 150 meters or so into the air, is pretty amazing,” said Eric Cheng, Director of Aerial Imaging for DJI. Pretty amazing, indeed.