WTF, NASA?

[reynardo]

Who has seen the image of the Earth from space, at night? The latest edition is here.

Here's a clipping I've just made, of Australia.



Click on it or here for the really weird bit.

Here's the bigger picture.

There's no-one in the centre of Australia. That is - there's almost no-one. According to Wikipedia, almost 75% of all Australians live in the cities or coastal areas.

That ain't the big lit-up bit on the left.

NASA are claiming it's wildfires, but here's a look at the area or somewhere similar:



You'd have a lot of trouble getting that lot to stay alight, let alone to show the sort of light that's in the photo.

So...

Did NASA make a boo boo of epic proportions (to us, anyway), or is that where the secret Boat People camps are, or is it a US Military secret like 100 Pine Gaps except bigger?

Comments

[red-day-dawning.livejournal.com]

Ok, that's seriously peculiar.

[fluidsparkles.livejournal.com]

Hmm US Militarty Or Aliens?

Anyone care to flip a coin?

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

Looks like a giant moomin to me! Only happier than my userpic, because he's heading for the Gold Coast.

[delphipsmith]

Yay for giant moomins!! At least we can be sure they will be friendly :)

[gelsey.livejournal.com]

World's largest slumber party/camp out.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Isn't there a lot of mining out there?

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Yes, but not so much that there's more light than Melbourne

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

For comparison, that dot in the middle of the question marks after 'HUGE' is Roxby Downs/Olympic Dam.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Wizards

[lordstorm.livejournal.com]

o_O

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's what my personal little spy-message was about!

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

I like the part where they say it could be other light sources 'like ships'. And then later they suggest fishing boats.

Has someone discovered the Inland Sea after all?

[moxie_man]

Obviously, some idiot didn't believe there was that much empty space and doctored the images.

[rivertempest.livejournal.com]

Bizarre!

Wizards or Aliens. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[delphipsmith]

All these comments totally made me LOL :D My guess it that it's Rock and Roll Heaven, and the lights are all the giant stages where they go to hear each other play ;)

Sadly, I'm sure it will turn out to be a much more boring explanation, i.e. that somebody probably doctored the image and it then escaped into the wild (accidentally on porpoise). Like those goofy stories on The Onion that somehow get picked up as actual news :D

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

I want to know what's making so much light at or near Peterborough. And why Whyalla/Port Augusta/Port Pirie is so dim. I mean, if Ceduna registers...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You've read the final chapter of The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep, right?

[turnberryknkn.livejournal.com]

The detailed answer I think is pretty cool. The whole image was pieced together from many smaller images obtained over successive nights, as the satellite made progressively shifting sweeps over the planet. A particular block of land would be imaged one night, the block geographically next to it on a different pass a little later, etc. As a particular fire burned its way across the land, the same fire would get pictured again and again, as it moved from its old block on one day into a new block being imaged the next day. In essence, what we're seeing in each bright squiggle, is the whole area burned by a single wildfire across the 9 days in April or the 13 days in October, assembled from night after night of reimaging where each fire was now.

Reality: often as cool as any conspiracy theory. :-)

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that makes no sense - look at the scenery, There really isn't enough scrub to give that much light unless you also enhanced every pic to exaggerate the fire light. Even the Black Saturday fires, with 100m high flames in thick scrub, didn't give that much light.