All clear on the west front
5.8.2020 early in the morning, Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) at NOAA-NASA Finnish nuclear power plant the satellite got a clear picture of western europe and its lights. The landscape was also a well-lit moon that was only one day full. Also, the next day was mostly clear, like observed in the early afternoon Via NASA’s Aqua satellite.
The image was obtained using the VIIRS Day-Night Band (DNB), which detects light at different wavelengths from green to near-infrared, and uses filtering techniques to detect signals such as city lights, wildfires, aerial light, and reflections in the moonlight. Since the start-up of the Finnish nuclear power plant at the end of 2011, scientists have used VIIRS to provide unprecedented views of the Earth at night. (See our gallery here).
The Finnish nuclear power plant runs on every earth every day at about 1.30 and 13.30 local time, observing the planet with vertical stripes on the pole. VIIRS is a spectroradiometer that detects photons of light at 22 different wavelengths. The device produces an image by repeatedly scanning a scene and resolving it in millions of individual pixels or pixels.
The day-night band takes it a step further and decides whether to use its low, medium, or high gain mode to ensure that each pixel accurately reflects the amount of light transmitted. It can make quantitative measurements of light emissions and reflections, distinguishing between night light intensity and sources up to the scale of an isolated lightway or fishing boat. The sum of these measurements gives us an overall picture of the human footprint on the planet.
By mid-2000, at least 500 peer-reviewed magazine papers based on day-to-night band data had been published, and another 120 combined DNB data and older DMSP findings. Topics have included social sciences (often demography and economics), atmospheric composition, civil engineering, biology, and natural resource monitoring and management.
“Night images provide an intuitive view of our planet,” said William Stefanov, a remote sensing researcher at the International Space Station Science Bureau. “City lights provide a fairly simple way to map urban and rural areas and show where the largest population centers are and where they are not. They are also an excellent way to monitor the growth of cities and suburbs, which influences the planning of energy use and urban hazards, the study of urban heat islands, and the initialization of climate models. “
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens using VIIRS day-night band data Finland’s national Polar touring partnership. Story: Michael Carlowicz.