APOD: Earth at Night (2012 Dec 07)

[neufer]

south vs north korea is hilarious

<<North Korean defectors have testified to the existence of prisons and concentration camps including "total control zones", (Kwan-li-so : 관리소), where political undesirables are imprisoned for life at hard labor and are subjected to reported torture, starvation, rape, murder, medical experimentation, forced labour, and forced abortions. According to Amnesty International around 200,000 prisoners (about 0.85% of the population) are held in six large political prison camps, being in operation since the 1950s. They are forced to work in conditions approaching slavery and are frequently subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. People suspected not to be loyal to the regime, e. g. because they are Christians, or because they criticized the leadership, are deported to these camps without trial, often with their whole family and mostly without any chance to be released. The International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK) estimates that over 10,000 people die in North Korean prison camps every year.>>

[rguyg]

There's something bizarre going on in the picture of the western half of Australia. The photo shows a dense pattern of lights in the Great Sandy, Gibson, and Victoria deserts. Google Maps will confirm for you that those areas are utterly desolate.

I too looked into google and found white dry lake beads reflecting light back from the center of Australia

[idahogie]

I came here because I wondered about Western Australia as well. Glad to see everyone pondering that.

How about north-central Siberia? Pretty lit-up -- more than I'd expect. Perhaps mining?

[Chris Peterson]

I came here because I wondered about Western Australia as well. Glad to see everyone pondering that.

How about north-central Siberia? Pretty lit-up as well.

Large areas of either snow or sand reduce sky darkness, so what the map shows for both places makes sense.

[gmPhil]

As well as adding my voice to those perplexed by the lights in Western Australia, I didn't know North Central Russia was so populous... unless (perhaps) like teh Gulf of Guinea (Nigeria) these are oil installations lighting the place up?

[owlice]

Siberia has wildfires; see here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=78767

[idahogie]

But the western US also had massive wildfires. If wildfires are illuminating western Australia and north-central Siberia, then why not the western US? Had they died down before October?

[bystander]

OVERVIEW
from Planetary Collective on vimeo

On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect.

The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment.

‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.

[neufer]

But the western US also had massive wildfires. If wildfires are illuminating western Australia and north-central Siberia, then why not the western US? Had they died down before October?

I don't think that this was supposed to be some sort of average of all the clear night views of planet Earth over some period of time(; an average would not show any wildfires because they simply happen too infrequently). And it is not for a single day since one would never see all those Australian wildfires burning simultaneously.

Rather, it is a nice montage of the sorts of lights (both natural & artificial) that one views from space.

Populated regions like the US also have occasional wildfires; however, including any U.S. wildfire (much less the whole bunch of them as is the case for Australia) would only confuse the folks trying to locate their home towns.

[rstevenson]

I too was perplexed by the lights in Western Australia, as well as those mentioned by others. I downloaded one of the large versions of this image and cut and pasted two portions of the Australian part of the image into a new pic for comparison. Here it is...

OZ.jpg (9.6 KiB) Viewed 1911 times

The left half of my image shows the most southern large blob of light in the Western Desert of Australia, approximately over the Neale Junction Nature Reserve. The right part of my image shows the area around the city of Melbourne. There are over 4 million people in Melbourne, but probably just a few hundred in that Western Desert blob. (My bits were copied from the same image at the same scale.)

The NASA image is "a composite assembled from data acquired ... over nine days in April 2012 and thirteen days in October 2012." Unless there was some vast network of wildfires that just happened to happen in that period, there is something else shown here. There are large mines in Western Australia, and no doubt some exploration as well, but the amount of light shown seems, well, implausible.

Wikipedia says, on its Bushfires in Australia page, "In the southwest ... bushfires occur in the summer dry season and severity is usually related to seasonal growth." The summer dry season in Australia is December through March.

Rob

[bystander]

But the western US also had massive wildfires. If wildfires are illuminating western Australia and north-central Siberia, then why not the western US? Had they died down before October?

There is evidence of the wildfires in Western US, most noticeably Western North Dakota.

East of the fires you can make out Bismark an Minot. On the Southern edge is Dickinson. On the Western edge is Williston, partially obscured by the fires. To the North is Estevan, just over the border in Canada.

[ta152h0]

Darkness....brought to you at the speed of light....

[owlice]

On October 13, 2012, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of fires burning in northern Australia. Smoke from the fires streams to the northwest due to trade winds blowing from the southeast. Red outlines indicate hot spots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natura ... p?id=79430

Fires in Western Australia

Bushfires are burning near the coast of Western Australia, and those hotspots as well as the smoke from those fires can be seen from NASA's Terra satellite.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite has infrared capabilities that can detect heat from the various wildfires. The image was captured November 07, 2012.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires ... ralia.html

It looks like it's going to be a big fire season this year in Australia. Multiple fires across NSW at the moment.

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/498541 ... 013-a.html (Posted October 21, 2012)

In early October 2012, intense bushfires blazed in Australia’s Northern Territory, in a remote area northeast of Elliott. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of smoke from the fires streaming northeast on October 6, 2012.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natura ... p?id=79366

[owlice]

Click to view full size image

Northwestern North Dakota, one of the least-densely populated parts of the U.S., has been aglow at night in recent years. The light comes from oil drilling and gas flaring in the Bakken shale formation.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Featur ... /page4.php

[Bernard C Rooney]

It stacks up as more than plausible that they are fires in WA. There had been generally low rainfall leading up to October when moisture in the North caused severe thunderstorms to develop right down through toward the Great Australian bight. Fires like these do not have a lot of steam produced which would otherwise mask the flames, which btw are of greater intensity than electric light, and there is usually little other cloud once thunderstorms are done and dusted in that part of the world. The link below matches with area on satellite for fires.

B Rooney. Blue Knob RBFS

http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/fireall.html

[Bernard C Rooney]

Lightning strikes from the severe thunderstorms triggered the fires, of course.

[Boomer12k]

I was surprised at the difference between the Eastern and Western half of the United States. A very interesting picture. Thanks.

:---[===] *

[rtorlas is me]

Look to the left of the Koreas in the Yellow Sea. What are all those lights? I don't think there are any islands of any significance out there.

[neufer]

Look to the left of the Koreas in the Yellow Sea. What are all those lights?
I don't think there are any islands of any significance out there.

Squid fishing: http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 05#p120272

[Perk Cartel]

I'm a little confused by the extraordinary patterns of illumination shown for north western Australia over a vast area of what we know is largely uninhabited desert. I know we are experiencing a mining boom in this region but accordingl to Google Maps ( yes, even if their aerials are five or more years old, that amount of infrastructure would surely be visible) there's little evidnet development to account for all the energy infrastructure. Compare the region's illumination with say, Indonesia? Anyone care to enlighten me, so to speak, and relieve me of my ignorance?

[Perk Cartel]

For those who can't see the video above neufer posted, nor noticed the subject, the answer to the lights in Western Australia: wild fires.

It's largely a vast desert my dear colleague and wildfires look quite different to human infrastructure. Thanks for the comment, but not plausible without more facts.

[Tilt]

I see a tremendous amount of wasted energy and light pollution — <BLECH>

http://www.darksky.org/

[ives]

One of the first things that jumped out at me were the new batches of lights in western North Dakota and in a crescent south of San Antonio, TX: oil and gas shale fields that have just been developed in the last few years. They almost look like giant cities! Maybe this is what's going on in western Australia too - some sort of mining operations?

There is definitely something wrong with the lights for outback Aus. I've been working in the Aus mining industry for decades. I've flown all over the continent and I've traversed a large part of it on land. A very small number of the lights can be explained as mine sites and mining towns, but not the number shown - particularly around the border regions of Western Australia, South Australia & the Northern Territory.

Most of Northern & eastern Western Australia, the Northern Territory, South Australia, western Queensland and Western New South Wales have very few inhabitant, sparse mining and oil/gas activities and hence little reason for the vast number of lights shown.

[owlice]

According to NASA: "But not all light is electric. Glowing just as bright, flaming wildfires burn across Australia."

That is a quote from the YouTube video (by NASA/NOAA and in the public domain) that neufer posted on the previous page of this discussion. This strikes me as consistent with other images and information I've found and have already posted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3YYwIsMHzw

A joint program by NASA and NOAA, Suomi NPP captured this nighttime image by the satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). The day-night band on VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, gas flares, and wildfires. This new image is a composite of data acquired over nine days in April and thirteen days in October 2012. It took 312 satellite orbits and 2.5 terabytes of data to get a clear shot of every parcel of land surface.

This video uses the Earth at night view created by NASA's Earth Observatory with data processed by NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center and combined with a version of the Earth Observatory's Blue Marble: Next Generation.

[owlice]

Careful observers of the new "Black Marble" images of Earth at night released this week by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have noticed bright areas in the western part of Australia that are largely uninhabited. Why is this area so lit up, many have asked?

Away from the cities, much of the night light observed by the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite in these images comes from wildfires. In the bright areas of western Australia, there are no nearby cities or industrial sites but, scientists have confirmed, there were fires in the area when Suomi NPP made passes over the region. This has been confirmed by other data collected by the satellite.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/n ... fires.html (emphasis mine)