In Western Australia, the government declared a bushfire emergency after a busy weekend (February 3-4, 2007) of fires across the state. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite shows a large fire near the town of Dwellingup, which is about 83 kilometers (about 52 miles) south-southeast of Perth. According to news reports, the fire had destroyed 16 homes and burned at least 11,000 hectares (~27,000 acres) as of February 5. The area in which MODIS detected actively burning fire is outlined in red in this image. Smoke spreads west over the southern Indian Ocean.
The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of the region in additional resolutions.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
