We publish a good deal of wildfire imagery on our natural hazards page (particularly after the wildfire season ramped up recently in Colorado and other states in the western United States). Most of the imagery is acquired during the day by instruments on polar-orbiting satellites: the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Aqua and Terra, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on EO-1, or the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on Terra.
So it caught our eyes when this image of wildfire smoke at night, as captured by the Expedition 31 crew on the International Space Station, turned up. Faint smoke is visible drifting near Mexico’s Ciudad Juaréz, a border city along the Rio Grande adjacent to El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juaréz is the left part of the combined city; El Paso is on the right. It isn’t possible to distinguish the US/Mexico border, but a line of lights along Interstate 10—which is slightly north of the border—is visible. (See this story about city lights viewed from space for a clearer view of Interstate 10 and the border). It’s likely the smoke originated from the Whitewater-Baldy wildfire, a large blaze (the largest in New Mexican history, in fact) that has burned in 225 miles to northeast of El Paso in Gila National Forest since May 16, 2012.
The photo was taken on June 2, 2012, with a Nikon D3S, a digital single-lens reflex camera identical to what’s available to consumers. A Russian spacecraft docked to the station is visible on the left side of the image.
- Earth Observatory - NASA
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