Fire Down Under

When this nightlight composite was published in 2012, observers wondered how there could be so much light in sparsely populated areas of the continent's Western Outback.

The extent of the lighting turned out to be a function of composite imaging. Fires and other lights that were detected on one day were integrated into the composite, multi-day picture despite being temporary phenomena. Because different lands burned at different times, the cumulative result is the appearance of a massive blaze.