On the plains at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains in northwestern India, scores of agricultural fires were burning on October 30, 2005. Shown in this image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, the fires (marked in red) are spreading smoke to the southeast along the base of the mountains. The fires are concentrated in the states of Punjab (closest to Pakistan, at left) and Haryana (to the southeast), two of India’s agricultural powerhouses.

The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center