Even people who aren't that familiar with volcanoes might have heard of Krakatoa/Krakatau, which provided the big blast in 1883 which caused a lot of damage (tsunamis, ashfall), created the loudest sound ever heard in the world, and also blew out the center of the former island, where there is now an underwater caldera.
In the center of the caldera there's a smaller volcano that grew there after the major explosion of 1883, named Anak Krakatau, meaning "child of Krakatau". It has been frequently active, and a couple of years ago caused a local tsunami that killed some folks at a coastal music festival.
Well, this is timely (unlike many of my other posts as I catch up over the coming weeks and months), because little Anak acted up on September 5, with a pretty potent eruption of its own. Now, preliminary estimates put it about 10 times less than the 1883 cataclysm, but given how big that was, this one was pretty heavy.
I've got a NASA image and a short news story below. All that brown stuff is ash in the atmosphere, and the white plume is the steaming aftermath.
Video -- the first part of this Australian news story has the best compilation of video of the eruption that I've seen.
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