Starship Asterisk*

davidtrap wrote:I'm concerned about the accuracy of this map - there's very little settlement in the mid western regions of Australia to generate that much light??? And there's almost no light over Indonesia or PNG???

DT

Night Lights 2012 wrote: The nighttime view of Earth was made possible by the “day-night band” of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite. VIIRS detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe dim signals such as gas flares, auroras, wildfires, city lights, and reflected moonlight.

Away from the cities, much of the nightlight observed by Suomi NPP is wildfire. In other places, fishing boats, gas flares, lightning, oil drilling, or mining operations can show up as points of light. The number of rural lights is also a function of composite imaging. Fires and other lighting could have been detected on any one day and integrated into the composite picture even though they were temporary. That seems to be the case in central and western Australia, where many lights appear in this map. Different areas burned with wildfire at different times that the satellite passed over, giving the impression (in the composite view) that the entire area was lit up at once.

davidtrap wrote:I'm concerned about the accuracy of this map - there's very little settlement in the mid western regions of Australia to generate that much light??? And there's almost no light over Indonesia or PNG???

DT

Wombat wrote:This picture has been posted at least three times and each time been discreditied - I'm amazed that it is still in the archives! Surely there are more recent/better ones to post!
The answer that the light comes from more than just cities is of course correct; but bush fires in the Great Sandy Desert(?) have you ever been there? Its a desert! Nothing to burrn there... How about the massive light show east of Siberia!? ... or the other massive amount in northern Canada?
Come on APOD get rid of this one and get back to your normal high quality images.

Wombat wrote:
The answer that the light comes from more than just cities is of course correct;
but bush fires in the Great Sandy Desert(?) have you ever been there?
Its a desert! Nothing to burrn there...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triodia_(grass) wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]A controlled burn of Triodia (1989), CSIRO[/color][/b]

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<<Triodia is a large genus of hummock-forming grass endemic to Australia; they are commonly known as spinifex, although they are not a part of the coastal genus Spinifex. The vegetation of the Great Sandy Desert is dominated by spinifex. Triodia is a perennial Australian grass which grows in arid regions and has awl-shaped, pointed leaves. The leaf tips (high in silica) can break off in the skin, leading to infections. Leaves are 30–40 centimetres long. Spinifex has traditionally had many uses for Australian Aborigines. The seeds were collected and ground to make seedcakes. Spinifex resin was an important adhesive used in spear-making. Smoke signals were made to communicate with families and groups a long distance away, as burning spinifex produces a strong black smoke. The species Triodia wiseana is used for building shelters; bunched together it is used for trapping fish against creek beds. It is called baru in the languages of the Yindjibarndi and Ngarluma people, the English term is hard spinifex.>>

Boomer12k wrote:
I thought there would be more lights in Greenland... looks more like "Whiteland"...

neufer wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:
I thought there would be more lights in Greenland... looks more like "Whiteland"...

Surely you understand by now that science is done on grayscale images (or, more specifically, the numbers represented by those images), and that the color ones (like those showing Greenland as green) are almost exclusively used for outreach.

geckzilla wrote:

neufer wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:
I thought there would be more lights in Greenland... looks more like "Whiteland"...

Surely you understand by now that science is done on grayscale images (or, more specifically, the numbers represented by those images), and that the color ones (like those showing Greenland as green) are almost exclusively used for outreach.

Stop, thief!

neufer wrote:And no one has ever accused me of being mature :!:

Chris Peterson wrote:

neufer wrote:
And no one has ever accused me of being mature

I guess that depends on what definition of "mature" you're working with.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=mature wrote:
mature (adj.) mid-15c., "ripe," also "careful, well-considered," from Latin maturus "ripe, timely, early."

maturation (n.) early 15c., "the coming to a head of a boil, etc.; a state of producing pus,"
from Middle French maturation and directly from Latin maturationem.

mikechillit wrote:
I noticed it for the Australian Outback first, but then noticed it all over the place. The image is simply wrong in so many ways it isn't reliable and shouldn't be used. There is a 2000 version variously listed as a National Geographic image, but it's also NASA. It is far more accurate in the areas I'm able to check. "Transient Light" is a euphemism for "we screwed up" and shouldn't be tolerated by NASA. Staying with Australia to illustrate, if one uses the combined light from Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth as a comparison to that vastly greater light from NT and eastern WA, the logical population estimate would be in the 100 million range just in the Outback. That's absurd, and Kangaroos don't pack flashlights.