Close encounter with erupting Mount Yasur, Tanna Island, Vanuatu

GoPro extreme sports camera attached on the back of Phantom 2 quadcopter has been flown over the Yasur volcano, Tanna Island in Vanuatu. Both the camera and the quadcopter survived extreme conditions in close encounter with lava spewing volcano. The result is the following impressive video:

Video courtesy of Shaun O'Callaghan

"Yasur, the best-known and most frequently visited of the Vanuatu volcanoes, has been in more-or-less continuous strombolian and vulcanian activity since Captain Cook observed ash eruptions in 1774. This style of activity may have continued for the past 800 years. Yasur, located at the SE tip of Tanna Island, is a mostly unvegetated 361-m-high pyroclastic cone with a nearly circular, 400-m-wide summit crater.

Yasur is largely contained within the small Yenkahe caldera and is the youngest of a group of Holocene volcanic centers constructed over the down-dropped NE flank of the Pleistocene Tukosmeru volcano. The Yenkahe horst is located within the Siwi ring fracture, a 4-km-wide, horseshoe-shaped caldera associated with eruption of the andesitic Siwi pyroclastic sequence. Active tectonism along the Yenkahe horst accompanying eruptions of Yasur has raised Port Resolution harbor more than 20 m during the past century." (GVP)

Featured image: Shaun O'Callaghan