Starship Asterisk*

test wrote:
south vs north korea is hilarious

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea#Political_prison_camps wrote:
<<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.>>

Agemegos wrote: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.

idahogie wrote: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.

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.

idahogie wrote:
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?

idahogie wrote: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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

rtorlas is me wrote:
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.

Ele6 wrote: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.

Tory wrote: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?

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.

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.