Refilling of Pu'u 'O'o Crater (July 8, 2007)

On June 17-19, 2007, and intrusion into Kilauea's upper east rift zone led to the cessation of eruptive activity at Pu'u 'O'o and the collapse of the Pu'u 'O'o crater floor. This is chronicled on these two HVO Web pages: http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/archive/2007_06_19.html; http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/archive/2007_06_26.html. The quiet did not last long though, and lava began to erupt on the floor of the Pu'u 'O'o crater by July 2 (http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/archive/2007_07_23.html) from an eastern and a western vent on the crater floor. The crater floor was quickly buried and the crater began to refill with lava. This video shows the competing interaction between flows from the eastern vent (to the left) and the western vent (to the right) on the crater floor for a period of several hours on July 8, 2007.

The images that comprise this video were made by stitching together three webcam images into a panoramic view. The webcam was positioned on the north rim of the Pu'u 'O'o crater and acquired a group of images every minute. The images within each group were acquired about 6 seconds apart, and the time-stamp shown on each frame in the video is based on the timing of the right-hand image. The resulting video is played at 15 frames per second.