Halema'uma'u Explosive Eruption (September 2, 2008)

An explosive eruption from the informally-named Overlook vent at Kilauea's summit (see http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/timeline/ for links describing eruptive activity at the summit of Kilauea Volcano) occurred on September 2, 2008. This eruption was dominated by juvenile scoria and was the largest eruption to date in terms of mass erupted. The event occurred at night with incandescent tephra erupting from the vent like fireworks, as seen in this video.

The images that comprise this video were acquired by a video monitoring system (recording in a low-light mode) in the observation tower of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory about 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) north of the vent. The original video acquisition rate was 5 frames per second, and the resulting video is played at 50 frames per second.