Barren Island eruption recorded using night vision

Indian Coast Guard has captured Barren Island volcano in action using night vision. The volcano awakened in 1991 after over 150 years and had several eruptive phases since then. The last seems to have started on January 23, 2017.

The island is uninhabited, and the northern part of the island is, as the name suggests, barren and devoid of vegetation. Private citizens of India can visit the volcanic island by chartered boats after obtaining the permission of the Forest Department in Port Blair.

Video courtesy Indian Coast Guard (via Telegraph Report)

Unfortunately, it's unclear when the video was recorded. The first appeared on YouTube on March 4.

Geological summary

Barren Island, a possession of India in the Andaman Sea about 135 km NE of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, is the only historically active volcano along the N-S-trending volcanic arc extending between Sumatra and Burma (Myanmar). The 354-m-high island is the emergent summit of a volcano that rises from a depth of about 2250 m. The small, uninhabited 3-km-wide island contains a roughly 2-km-wide caldera with walls 250-350 m high.

The caldera, which is open to the sea on the west, was created during a major explosive eruption in the late Pleistocene that produced pyroclastic-flow and -surge deposits. Historical eruptions have changed the morphology of the pyroclastic cone in the center of the caldera, and lava flows that fill much of the caldera floor have reached the sea along the western coast. (GVP)

Featured image credit: Barren Island eruption captured on night vision. Credit: Indian Coast Guard