The Visible Infrared Imaging
Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)
on the Suomi NPP satellite captured these nighttime
views of the Persian Gulf region on September 30, October 5, October 10, and
October 15, 2012. The images are from the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects
light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering
techniques to observe signals such as gas flares, auroras, wildfires, city
lights, and reflected moonlight.
Each image includes an inset of the Moon in four different phases. September 30 shows the Persian Gulf
by the light of the full Moon; October 15 shows the effects of a new Moon. As
the amount of moonlight decreases, some land surface features become harder to
detect, but the lights from cities and ships become more obvious. Urbanization
is most apparent along the northeastern coast of Saudi
Arabia, in Qatar, and in the United
Arab Emirates (UAE).
In Qatar and UAE, major highways can even be discerned by nighttime lights.
In eighteenth-century England, a small group of entrepreneurs,
inventors and free thinkers—James Watt and Charles Darwin’s grandfathers among
them—started a club. They named it the Lunar Society, and the “lunaticks” scheduled their
dinner meetings on evenings of the full Moon. The timing wasn’t based on any
kind of superstition, it was based on practicality. In the days before
electricity, seeing one’s way home after dark was far easier by the light of a
full Moon. In the early twenty-first century, electricity has banished the need
for such careful scheduling, but the light of the full Moon still makes a
difference.
1. References
2.
Uglow, J. (2002) The Lunar Men: Five Friends
Whose Curiosity Changed the World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
NASA Earth Observatory
image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS day-night band data from
the Suomi National Polar-orbiting
Partnership. Suomi
NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense. Caption by Michon Scott.
Instrument:
Suomi NPP - VIIRS
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