Photo credit: Reuben Wu via My Modern Met
This is not the work of Photoshop, just real photographs by Reuben Wu of Kawah Ijen – part of the Ijen volcano complex – a group of stratovolcanoes in East Java, Indonesia with an active crater 200-meters deep. As the sun goes down, an eerie incandescence rises from the depths of the crater, due to the high-temperature liquid sulfur that flows from the edge of the lake and flares up in blue flames reaching up to 5-meters in height. Continue reading for another video, more pictures and additional information.
“The miners at Kawah Ijen monitor the molten sulfur as it flows out of pipes (from inside the volcano). Then they gather the coagulated sulfur, load it up and transport it to the side of the crater. The crystals are sold at about 680 rupiahs per kilogram (that’s about 5 US cents). The miners haul up about 80 to 100 kilograms per load, two loads every 24 hours. The sulfur mined at Kawah Ijen is among the purest in Indonesia, and used in the food and chemical industry,” reports Oddity Central.
