Mr float said...
A big day for Nasa.I've started saving for the tourist trips to the moon .i hear the cheese there is excellent

Wensleydale I believe, if Wallace is to be believed

^^^ OK yes I am a computer retard.

But if all the other threads here load in 2sec and this one won't fully load after 10mins, and 3x I have had to force close IE, then something is up. The pic is only 2.6mB and I download a 5mb mp3 in like 2 sec sometimes so what's the deal?

It is them.

My email to NASA:

From: <me>
Date: Friday, December 7, 2012 3:15 PM
To: "Cole, Stephen E (HQ-NG000)" <stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov>, John Leslie <John.Leslie@noaa.gov>, Rani Gran <Rani.C.Gran@nasa.gov>, "Keck, Aries C. (GSFC-429.0)[ADNET SYSTEMS INC]" <aries.keck@nasa.gov>
Subject: Earth at night video commentary: wildfires in Australia?

Dear NASA/NOAA,

I have just watched the video published on the NASA website of the new earth at night imagery you have put together. It is very impressive.

I am curious though about the wildfires the narrator mentions at around 1:45 in the video. Having spent much time in that part of Australia in the last decade, having family there still and regularly reading the news from the area, I'm sure I would have known if there had been fires that extensive in April or October this year. I was there myself in April.

What I have seen in that area are some very spectacular lightning displays, which I believe would match the published image quite closely.

Does NASA or NOAA have any solid evidence that these lights were in fact fires? Or could it be that they were in fact lightning flashes?

Regards,

Pat

Their reply:

From: Gran, Rani C. (GSFC-1300) [mailto:rani.c.gran@nasa.gov]
Sent: December-07-12 12:20 PM
To: <me>; Cole, Stephen E (HQ-NG000); john.leslie@noaa.gov; Keck, Aries C. (GSFC-429.0)[ADNET SYSTEMS INC]
Subject: Re: Earth at night video commentary: wildfires in Australia?

Hi Pat,

I really appreciate the question. A number of people have been asking that today. We are talking to a number of scientists and here is what they are saying to us. Below is the text

The number of rural lights is also a function of composite imaging. This new image of the Earth at night was assembled from data acquired over nine days in April 2012 and thirteen days in October 2012. This means fires and other lighting(such as ships) could have been detected on any one day and integrated into the composite picture, despite being temporary.

In the case of the western Australia, where many lights appear in global night lights map where there are not any nearby cities or industrial sites, a number of scientists have confirmed that fires were present in the area when Suomi NPP made passes over the region using other channels on Suomi NPP. Because different areas burned at different times that the satellite passed over, the cumulative result (in the composite view) gives the appearance of a massive blaze. These sources are temporary features, in contrast to cities which are always there, so they will be filtered over time as the product matures towards a research-grade dataset.

Rani
--
Rani C. Gran
Rani.C.Gran@nasa.gov
Earth Science Communications Lead
Office of Communications
Mail Code 420, B16, 321
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD. 20771
Cell: 301-332-6975
Phone: 301-286-2483


I still find it hard to believe. "a number of scientists have confirmed" sounds like some of the evidence we are presented for the existence of chemtrails, or to refute any human influence in climate change.

I found this in further digging:



I wonder if those rounded light patterns emanating from the centre of heavy clouds are fires too, like the elongated cloudless ones from the middle of Cape York that look like bushfire fronts...

You can see the Morning Glory clouds forming over the gulf there nicely.

That's not lightning, they're not MG clouds...

Sheesh, seems like I just can't trust my own eyes any more.