People on the Big Island are talking about "the glow" — the latest show being put on by Kilauea Volcano, at its Halema'uma'u Crater.

"It is beautiful," Jim Gale, chief of interpretation for Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, said Wednesday.

"For months and months there was no glow at all. Right now, it's a pretty continuous glow."

The glow is emanating from a vent in the crater that's filled with molten lava.

"Just last week, it got really intense," Gale said, with an orange glow "from edge to edge of the vent" that also illuminated the plume of gases.

"With a full moon this week, people are raving about it," he said.

"The whole landscape is very beautiful."

From the nearest public viewing point — the grounds of the Jaggar Museum, 1.2 miles from the crater — the lava itself isn't visible, but "the glow is very impressive," Gale said.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, there were 400 people in the museum parking lot, he said. Normally, the after-dark visitor count there is a dozen at a time.

The Jaggar Museum, which opens at 8:30 a.m., has extended its hours until 9:30 p.m. for the duration of the significant glow.

The buzz about the glow is big enough that Hawai'i Forest and Trail is considering adding a nighttime volcano tour to its offerings, said Chris Colvin, the eco-tour company's sales manager.

"People really want to see the red stuff," Colvin said. "That's what gets them going."

GOOD FOR BUSINESS

Earl Kakugawa, a shift manager at the Volcano House hotel at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, agreed.

"It's kind of like a wow thing," Kakugawa said.

Viewing the glow from the Jaggar Museum overlook is close enough that "they can actually see activity, rather than steam and smoke," Kakugawa said. In the past week, the hotel has noticed an increase in both nighttime restaurant customers and walk-in reservations for the hotel, he said.

Hawaiian Airlines has seen an uptick in travel to the Big Island over the past week, but it's impossible to know whether the volcano activity contributed to it, company spokesman Keoni Wagner said.

Though the churning, hot lava that creates the glow can't be seen from public viewing areas, scientists were able to get closer June 4 and post the resulting video, said Janet Babb, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey Hawai'i Volcano Observatory.

The wind direction hasn't been right for such a close look since then — and the intensity of the glow appeared to be decreasing as of Wednesday, Babb said.

But she wouldn't predict what might happen next.

"It's an active volcano and the only constant is change," she said.