Anak Krakatau in eruption, Sunda Strait, Indonesia — 11 August to 10 September 2026
Anak Krakatau, Krakatau archipelago, Sunda Strait, between Java and Sumatra, Indonesia
Snapshots are curated, event-dated observations from open satellite data. They document specific events; they are not the systematic instrument records above. Every image carries its provenance in-frame.
Caption
Sentinel-2 optical imagery of Anak Krakatau in the Sunda Strait, over six satellite passes from 11 August to 10 September 2026. The volcano is in a sustained eruption across the whole series: on 11 and 24 August a plume already streams west from the vent, and by 5 September it has intensified into a dense convective ash column, the plume's drift rotating through the week (south-west, then west, then north and north-west) as winds shift. The true-colour frames show the plume and the barren, ash-covered cone of Anak Krakatau beside the vegetated older islands of the Krakatau group — Rakata, Sertung and Panjang; the shortwave-infrared frames render the same passes in false colour (R:B12 G:B08 B:B04), in which the ash column appears cyan and a shortwave-infrared-bright core marks hot material at the vent. Each frame is stretched independently. Imagery: Copernicus Sentinel-2 (open data) via Microsoft Planetary Computer, rendered by NewsplanetAI.
Claim boundary
Sentinel-2 registers the eruption plume, its position and drift, and — in shortwave infrared — hot material at the vent; it does not measure the eruption's magnitude, its column height, or any effect on the ground. Each frame is a single instant on a two-to-five-day satellite cadence, so pulses between passes are unseen, and detail below the 20-metre pixel is not resolved.