Mount Tavurvur in Papua, New Guinea erupted on 29 August, and an amazing video captured the explosive event in remarkable detail. The remarkable video was captured by a local tourist enjoying time on the water.
Phil McNamara, a taxi driver from Townsville, Australia, took a one-minute video of the eruption and put it on YouTube. Since that time, the short film has started to go viral on the World Wide Web, collecting over 825,000 views in its first day.
McNamara was vacationing in New Guinea with his wife, Linda, and other friends when he filmed the video. The one-minute long film shows clouds reacting to a supersonic shockwave from the explosion, as well as dust rising into the atmosphere.
The photographer is heard warning other passengers on the boat with him, "Watch out for the shock, it's coming."
A boom is heard, as the wave of highly-compressed air passes the camera. Exclamations of surprise are heard from other people on the boat with the taxi driver.
"It was a spur of the moment thing to head out and film the volcano. We saw it erupting and the ladies from Kokopo Beach Bungalows where we were staying said they could take us out on the boat to get a closer look. I thought I might as well try and capture something you rarely get to see," McNamara said.
Mount Tavurvur is an active stratovolcano which, along with nearby Mount Vulcan, destroyed the nearby city of Rabaul ten years ago. Tavurvur had previously devasted the enclave in 1937, when the eruption took the lives of over 500 people. It is located on the island of New Britain in Papua, where it is the most-active volcano in the Rabaul Caldera.
The caldera of the volcano, the area where the ground has collapsed into the Earth, measures 5.5 miles across and 8.7 miles in length.
This volcanic eruption was the first one ever seen by McNamara, who had no idea the explosion would occur as he was filming. This eruption lifted lava hundreds of feet into the air, and ash flew thousands of feet into the atmosphere. Had any aircraft been flying directly over the volcano at the time of the eruption, the material could have caused a hazard to the flight.
The 58-year-old is surprised at the reaction his video is attracting from around the world.
"There's been a lot of interest. I'm just having a sit back now and trying to work out what to do about it all," McNamara told the press.
