Earth from space: Italy's 'ticking time bomb' plays peek-a-boo through a mysterious hole in the clouds

This stunning satellite photo shows one of the world's most famous and potentially dangerous volcanoes, Mount Vesuvius, playing a game of peek-a-boo with an orbiting spacecraft through a strangely shaped hole in the clouds.

Vesuvius is a 4,203-foot-tall (1,281 meters) stratovolcano located next to the city of Naples along the western Italian coastline. It is most famous for a massive eruption in A.D. 79, which destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and killed around 2,000 people, around half of which were perfectly preserved by the pyroclastic flows, along with their homes and possessions.

Today, around 800,000 people live on the volcano's slopes and up to 3 million people reside within the potential danger zone of future eruptions, making Vesuvius "one of the world's most dangerous volcanoes," according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

In the image, Vesuvius' caldera — a large bowl-like depression caused by the collapse of the mountain's summit during a previous eruption — appears to peer up through a gap in the clouds like a giant eye.

A large curved ridge can also be seen near the top of the cloud gap. This is the remnant of Mount Somma — an ancient volcano that once stood in the same spot as Vesuvius, before the newer volcano's cone grew from its center.

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It is unclear exactly what caused the gap in the otherwise thick clouds covering Vesuvius and Naples.

However, the circular shape of the hole is similar to circular holes punched in the clouds by airplanes, known as "fallstreak holes." It is, therefore, plausible that a plane taking off or landing from Naples International Airport could have created the hole.

"Ticking time bomb"

Vesuvius is part of the Campanian volcanic arc — a string of volcanoes in Italy, including the currently active Mount Etna, that sits on a boundary between the African and Eurasian tectonic plates.

The volcano's last major eruption concluded in 1944. Since then, the region surrounding Vesuvius has experienced several earthquake swarms, most recently in 1999, according to the Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Scientists also believe that the next big eruption may not be too far around the corner.

In a 2011 paper published in Nature, researchers described Vesuvius as "Europe's ticking time bomb" and warned that scientists and the civil authorities can't agree on how to prepare for a future eruption.