Culture
What Produces More Light Pollution in Australia: Cities or Wildfires?
Parts of the outback are lit up with so much flame they look like huge metropolises at night.
When we published NASA's phenomenal surveillance photos of sleeping Earth, some people wondered why powerful lights were blazing in areas with no significant population centers. Wrote one observer: "There's something wrong with that image – way too much light showing up in the Australian outback."
It seems other folks were bugging NASA about these phantom cities, too. On Thursday, the space agency released a picture of one of the biggest generators of mystery glows, Western Australia, explaining that what people were seeing in that remote terrain are humongous wildfires burning the bush away. (Super-large version here.)