Bushfires dot across the landscape at the northern end of Australia.
NASA’s Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image of bushfires in northern Australia with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on July 06, 2016. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS’s thermal bands, are outlined in red. Each hot spot is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by plumes of smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for fire. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner