Left: Thurston lava tube (10 second exposure!)
Right: the chain of craters road
And now for the 2nd one. I did this hike on 20th and 21st January.
See here (at the Hawaii Volcano observatory web site) for details of the eruption on the 18th. Particularly the end of the 4th paragraph with regard to lava seen on the nights of the 18th-20th.
BIG view from the 2nd hike. This was the one where I camped overnight near Napau Crater. With this photo I forgot to put the camera on wide-angle before taking the photos to make this panorama. As a result this is 19 photos stitched together!
Top is the large one (800 pixels deep) and the bottom the small one (1200 pixels wide
Left: Forest trail to the campsite
Right: First of many views from the campsite!
Left (time 17:50) :-10 minutes before sunset and the lava is visible for the first time
Right (18:25) :- and half an hour later its visible everywhere! The lava furthest to the right is presumably what is being referred to in the web site report above.
Left (18:35) :- now the sky starts to glow (2.5 second exposure giving about what I saw).
Right: same time - wider angle and 4 second exposure.
Left (time 21:00):- 15 second exposure again giving what I could actually see.
Right (21:50):- as above - WOW!
Left (time 02:20) :- my favourite - the clouds kept coming and going through the night and this was when they and the glow was at its best.
Right: next day - the tree middle right is the same one as in the picture on the left.
Left (time (05:30):- I set off at 5am to hike closer to the lava - this was taken at the same place as the wide panorama picture near the top of this page.
Right: heading back into the twilight
Left: lava flowing only about 100 yards from me.
Right: view of the most recent lava flow - only weeks old. (The red blob in the near foreground is NOT lava by the way!)
See here for a map of the flow that occurred 18th-19th. On this map, I was close to the left edge of bright red lava flow, somewhere beween where the grey and pink flows meet it.
Left: Another view of the recent lava flow. It was onlt when I got back to the visitor centre to tell them I'd returned from my hike safely that I realised I'd gone rather further than they meant. They were showing someone where the current lava flow had got to and to do that they showed them an aerial photo that included this sign (I'm stood in trees that were also on that photo)!
Right:- warm to touch lava - this tree was still smouldering!
Two more views of the crater and of steam close to the current flow to finish
Actually, to finish - I was there on the night of 20-21 January.