Shortly after 12:30 p.m. local time, on September 4, 2004, a large cloud of ash and smoke erupted from Mount Egon on the Indonesian island of Flores. When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flew over on NASA’s Aqua satellite a little over an hour later, the light gray cloud straddled the island. The ash plume rose up to 3,000 meters above the volcano’s crater. As of Monday, September 6, up to 2,100 people had been evacuated from villages around the volcano, as the mountain continued to show signs of activity. For more information about the eruption, please visit Relief Web, sponsored by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
NASA image by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory Team, using data provided by the MODIS Rapid Response Team at Goddard Space Flight Center