This detailed astronaut photograph depicts the summit caldera of the volcano. The huge caldera—6 kilometers in diameter and 1,100 meters deep—formed when Tambora’s estimated 4,000-meter-high peak was removed, and the magma chamber below emptied during the April 10 eruption. Today the crater floor is occupied by an ephemeral freshwater lake, recent sedimentary deposits, and minor lava flows and domes emplaced during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Layered tephra deposits are visible along the northwestern crater rim. Active fumaroles, or steam vents, still exist in the caldera.

In 2004, scientists discovered the remains of a village, that was once underground but now has resurfaced. They found two adults buried under approximately 3 meters of ash in a gully on Tambora’s flank—remnants of the former Kingdom of Tambora preserved by the 1815 eruption that destroyed it. The similarity of the Tambora remains to those associated with the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius has led to the Tambora site’s description as “the Pompeii of the East.”