- Natural Color (2.8 Mb)
- False Color (2.2 Mb)
On July 17, 2005, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a view of the forest fire (marked in red) in Spain northeast of Madrid that was responsible for the tragic death of 11 firefighters. The top image in this pair is a photo-like image, while the bottom image has been enhanced by including MODIS’ observations of infrared light. In the enhanced-color scene, vegetation is bright green, clouds are light blue, and the burned area is magenta. At the western perimeter of the fire, a small area of bright pink indicates areas that were actively flaming at the time.
References & Resources
NASA images created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC.












