Image of the Day: Nighttime satellite view of forest fires in the U.S. West, 17 August 2012
Caption by Adam Voiland
20 August 2012 For more than a decade, scientists have used data from instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites to map the locations of wildfires. Now researchers have another tool for observing fires around the world. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite (S-NPP) carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night. On 17 August 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi-NPP acquired this image of wildfires blazing in the western United States. The images were created with data from the instrument’s “day-night band,” which sensed the fire in the visible portion of the spectrum. The brightest fires are white; smoke is light gray. The lower image shows three of the largest fires burning in Idaho.
Night View of Western Wildfires