A thick plume of brownish smoke billowed from the Western Australia coast and over the Great Australian Bight on November 19, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite passed overhead and captured this natural-color image. The area where MODIS detected actively burning fire is outlined in red.
This stretch of the southern Western Australia coastline is remote, and much of it is protected as the Nuytsland Nature Reserve. According to the state Department of Environment and Conservation, the fire was triggered by lightning in the second week of November, and it had burned about 30,000 hectares (74,130 acres) as of November 20.
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NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
