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New Tonga Eruption

This just in from my dad Steven Gates:

I am at tongatapu airport…. just flew in from vava’u, and pilots pointed this out. Apparently it just popped up today! Near Hunga Tonga… you can see it in the photo. approx coordinates S 20º 27′ 73″ W 175º 25′ 61″ given to me by the pilots. These are probably the first photos of it. The pilots said the earlier pilots said nothing, and these guys just saw it for the first time this flight.

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Photos by Steven Gates

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 8:55 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “New Tonga Eruption”

  1. Reinaert Albrecht Says:
    March 17th, 2009 at 9:40 am

    I took the liberty to postprocess the pictures so as to clarify more detail:

    picture1
    picture2
    picture3

  2. Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai erupts « The Volcanism Blog Says:
    March 17th, 2009 at 9:59 am

    [...] post and pictures can be found here, and Eruptions has all the facts and background [...]

  3. Brian May Says:
    March 18th, 2009 at 3:10 am

    As a geology student at The Open University in the UK I much appreciate your post. To be there when it happens ! And in the S Pacific rather than , say, iceland. Luxury.

    Thanks

    Brian

  4. Olivier Says:
    March 19th, 2009 at 3:36 am

    Hi,

    I heard an eruption occured on the island of Tofua. A frriend of mine is there by himself and I can’t get in contact with him. Do you know if it’s true? Any news about this?

    Thanks for your answer

    ovittel@bluewin.ch

  5. Mark Says:
    March 19th, 2009 at 7:32 am

    Some pictures my brother in law took. What a sight to wake up to!

    image1
    image2

  6. Ken Hudnut Says:
    March 19th, 2009 at 11:58 am

    Is there any indication that the volcanic eruption changed character in association with the M 7.9 earthquake that was about 200 km SSE? The photos and reports are great - thank you! This link has the earthquake’s time and location, etc. — http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009ejbr.php

  7. Ulrich Kueppers Says:
    March 23rd, 2009 at 5:22 am

    Hi to Steven and Reinaert,
    I am very curious about a feature that can be seen in the foreground of the vent area in “image1″ of Reinaert: there are 3 lines of (probably) smoke. Could you please send me the picture in a higher resolution to u.kueppers@lmu.de?
    A big thanxx in advance from Munich, Germany.
    Ulli

  8. Reinaert Albrecht Says:
    March 25th, 2009 at 10:13 pm

    Steven,

    I just took the picture you see above and ‘enhanced’ it with the GIMP (photoshop alike program). There are some more high detail pictures here:
    http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/undersea_eruptions_near_tonga.html#photo2

    I guess the guy who took the pictures can give you a higher resolution image.

  9. Bjoern Heinemann Says:
    March 27th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

    Hello to Mark,

    the pictures your brother in law took are amazing. Do you know the place from which the image”VolcanoTonga2.jpg” was taken?

    Thank you very much, Bjoern.

  10. Ernest Pavese Says:
    November 6th, 2011 at 4:29 pm

    I am a long time watcher and I just thought I’d stop by and say hello there for the very first time. I truly take pleasure in your posts. Thank you

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