A view of the interior of crater 3. From the summit of Stromboli you cannot see the very bottom of the craters. In order to take these pictures we once risked going up to the crater's edge. We were there for a brief time only, and it was most uncomfortable (July 1981). Nowadays we consider this much too dangerous and we would not do it anymore. The eruption shown here is only very small. The lava did not fly higher than a few dozen metres above the edge of the crater. Nevertheless the heat radiation was strongly noticeable. After the eruption (picture at right) the cinders are lying on the crater floor and wall, cooling and ceasing to glow. The diameter of the vent (visible only in the right picture) is only one or two metres.