I was looking for a realtime-ish, high-res satellite image of the smoke from the fires near Emigrant Gap in Northern California, but I can't find any. Does NASA deliberately restrict the resolution of their images?
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
It's now called the "North Fire". Note that the fire is the responsibility of USFS (US forestry service) and not Cal Fire. (probably the fastest and best source) Fire Information for the North Fire (530)478-6880
Satellites are not real time. They rely on whether the satellite passes over the target area some number of times per day. The pictures only work well during daylight hours.
I maintain a local (Santa Cruz CA area) directory of fire and weather related links: (Sorry about the ugly HTML but something went wrong with my HTML editor and I haven't had time to manually undo the damage).
I suggest MODIS and VIIRS photos. Right now, this is what it's showing:
These might be useful:
Sorta. They reduce the resolution for commonly available images to minimize download traffic. NASA does have an archive of very large images available somewhere. The catch is that the original images are not corrected for slant angle and do not have any overlays, such as IR fire signatures. Unless you want to do your own image processing, methinks they won't help very much. I'll dig if you want, but not right now.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
NFSA fire perimeter map:
Try the "Briefing Mode". Top icon from the vertical menu on the left side of the screen. Also select "Estimated Cost to Date" from the 2nd pull down "bubble" below "incidents/overview". Looks like Mendocino Complex fire is the winner this year with 459,000 acres burned and $185,700,000 spent so far.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
-- Jeff Liebermann snipped-for-privacy@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #DAir quality and smoke: Find "North Fire", select, and then click on "See up to date air quality". It will show what direction the smoke is blowing and approximate density. Right now, it's blowing NE about 50 miles.
Air Resources Board Quality Assurance Air Monitoring for Placer County: The closest I could get is Auburn, which is in the opposite direction to where the smoke is blowing: Also Colfax city hall, which is closer to the fire: These look ok for now, but the numbers seem to be climbing.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Nice links. The FIRMS map and AIRNOW are nice, but AIRNOW shows the smoke plume missing Truckee, and it's really smokey here now.
Looks like we'll drive through some serious smoke tomorrow, passing through the gap.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
I don't know how long the delay might be between when the data is collected and when it's posted to the various web piles. It takes some time to process the images.
See my smoke related links in my follow ups in this thread.
Go to: Click on "North Fire" from the list on the left. The map should sorta center itself on the fire. Click on "See up to date air quality" button. At about 5PM PDST on Tues, the smoke was blowing from the south-west. At 7:30PM, it's now blowing from the south, where it will probably cover Hwy 80. It also looks like some hot spots are appearing in the satellite photos along Hwy 80. Be sure to check if it's open tomorrow.
Good luck and drive carefully.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Cool. That shows the plume in terms of air quality, which is more "visible" than a smoke image.
OK, thanks. We'll stay up here if it looks nasty.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc trk jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
The trouble with driving through smoke is that it obscures your view of the fire.
Did it once. People half an hour behind who did the same thing drove into a flame front, and couple of them ended up dead.
It was a four lane motor-way, and the trees that burnt were well back from the road, but there were enough of them on fire to cook cars all the way across both lanes in both directions.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
For smoke, NOAA HRRR (rapid refresh) is very close to real time: Zoom in to area. Click on: HRRR -> "Near Surface Smoke". Move the slider around at the bottom left to see what the smoke has been doing in the last few hours.
Some details:
You can also get a clue on the wind direction and predicted wind direction at: Checking predictions for Weds 5 to 10 AM PDT, it's going to be blowing from the north-west at 4 kt. At about noon, it will change direction and blow from the south-west. This suggests that you might have a rather smokey ride in the morning, but might be ok after noon.
Looks like the wind has just stopped (for now).
Methinks you might be driving through Colfax, so also check their PM
2.5 smoke numbers which looks like it's increasing:-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I mean they can be but obviously not with a very wide FOV.
They can't be real time and high resolution, regardless of field of view.
To give high resolution, they have to be in low Earth orbit, which means that they cannot remain over a single spot to give a continuous view or real-time view.
To give a continuous view, they need to be in geostationary orbit, which means they're much too far away to give high resolution.
This is what many people refused to understand when MH370 went missing. Despite what various US crime drama series suggest, the entire world is not under continuous high-resolution surveillance. Neither NASA nor anyone else has that ability.
Sylvia.
Large optical telescope pointed at the ground with a say ~2 meter mirror and ~15m focal length, it's on a computer-controlled gimbal so it can be aimed at stuff, or the entire spacecraft is rotated via reaction wheels.
To get approximately real-time you have an interlocking network of these in polar orbit so when one goes out of line-of-sight over the horizon another comes in pretty soon. See e.g. KH-11 KENNAN/CRYSTAL/KEY HOLE.
Not the entire world, no. But small parts of it? From time to time, surely.
John Larkin wrote
I would send my drone up, some km wide view in all directions is possible to find where it is safe. Not sure that is allowed over there.... The gist: Always carry a drone.... :-)
?
My math says that to get a 1 metre resolution from geosynchronous orbit (in yellow light), you need a mirror or lens 25 metres in diameter.
A sun synchronous satellite can be much lower, but only passes a given point on Earth once per day.
So, continuous coverage at high resolution from a satellite? No. Not even small parts of the Earth from time to time.
Your best option for that is a blimp.
Sylvia.
Sylvia Else
There is a US company that has many small satellites in orbit and does map very large parts of the world. I know they can detect objects the size of a ship and likely also planes.
Some videos about them on youtube, they were asked about that MH flight too. Think it was this one:
Yes, but not in real time. Ships don't move fast, so they'll generally be detected on successive orbits. An aircraft will only be spotted by chance, and most aircraft won't be found.
Sylvia.
For monitoring forest fire areas, shouldn't the (far) infrared be more interesting than visible light ?
Sun synchronous polar satellites (inclination about 100 degrees) pass over the same place twice a day, typically once during the day and once during the night in opposite direction.
For low latitude places like California low inclination low orbit satellites perform several good passes about every 1.5-2 hours, but then there is several hours without coverage.
Geostationary Meteosats send hemisphere pictures a few times an hour, but the resolution is poor.
To get a high resolution picture for a significant part of the hemisphere would require a huge transfer capacity. Assuming a 10000 x
10000 km FOV with1 km resolution requires 100 Mpixels. With 32 bits/pixel and a 30 Mbit/s TV-sat downlink, sending a single scan would take less than 2 minutes. For 100 m resolution 3 hours and 10 m resolution nearly two weeks would be needed. Of course uniform monotonic areas like the seas would allow some compression.
if a Chinese commercial group can do this circa today with essentially off-the-shelf hardware and a satellite about the size of a refrigerator (think they're zooming in the most it can?):
imagine what you could do with like, _real_ NRO/black project taxpayer money thrown at the problem and the ability to launch satellites the size of school buses on the regular.
They don't need to be in geosync, oblique angles and camera motion can be compensated for and if you want longer viewing time over your area of interest, first rule of government spending (certainly when it comes to defense/national security, at least) why have one when you can have X at X times the price. Camera 1, 15 minutes goes out of LOS, now camera 2, camera 3, camera 4, back to camera 1, etc.
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