These true-color images covering north-central New Mexico capture the
bluish-white smoke plume of the Los Alamos fire, just west of the Rio
Grande river. The middle image is a downward-looking (nadir) view,
taken by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on
NASA's Terra satellite. As MISR flew from north to south, it viewed
the scene from nine different angles. The top image was taken by the
MISR camera looking 60 degrees forward along the orbit, whereas the
bottom image looks 60 degrees aft.
The plume stands out more dramatically in the steep-angle views. Its
color and brightness also change with angle. By comparison, a thin, white,
water cloud appears in the upper right portion of the scene, and is most
easily detected in the top image. MISR uses these angle-to-angle
differences to monitor particulate pollution and to identify different
types of haze. Such observations allow scientists to study how airborne
particles interact with sunlight, a measure of their impact on Earth's
climate system. The images are about 400 km (250 miles) wide. The spatial
resolution of the nadir image is 275 meters (300 yards); it is 1.1
kilometers (1,200 yards) for the off-nadir images. North is toward the top.
Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/JPL, MISR Science Team
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