Severe Air Pollution in New Delhi View by NASA MISR

New Delhi, India's capital city, is currently suffering though a period of particularly poor air quality. In early November 2016, monitors at various locations in the area posted air quality index measurements as high as the 900s (the most severe ranking, "hazardous," is any air quality index measurement over 300). Thousands of schools have been closed, and a survey by the Associate Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India reports that 10 percent of the city's workers called in sick due to air-pollution-related health issues. According to several published news reports, the extreme air pollution may be due to a combination of nearby agricultural burning after harvest, urban construction and solid-waste burning, as well as remnants of firecracker smoke and additional car emissions after the celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, on October 30. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite passed over the region on Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, at around 11:05 a.m. local time. At left is an image acquired from MISR's vertical viewing camera. The Himalayas stretch across the northern portion of the image. This towering mountain range tends to concentrate pollution in the region immediately to the south, including New Delhi, by preventing pollutants from blowing northwards. New Delhi, whose location is indicated on the image, is under a patch of especially thick haze. At 6:00 a.m. local time on that date, the U.S. Mission India NowCast Air Quality Index for New Delhi was reported at 751, more than twice the threshold for hazardous air quality. At right, a map of aerosol optical depth is superimposed on the image. Optical depth is a quantitative measure of the abundance of aerosols (tiny particles in the atmosphere). Optical depths for the area around New Delhi have not been calculated because the haze is so thick that the algorithm has classified the area as a cloud. In the region immediately surrounding the thick haze, optical depths approach 1.0. An optical depth of 1.0 means that only about 37 percent of direct sunlight reaches the surface due to interactions with particles in the atmosphere. These data were acquired during Terra orbit 89805. Other MISR data are available through the NASA Langley Research Center; for more information, go to https://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/project/misr/misr_table. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Terra spacecraft is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. The MISR data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center, Hampton, Virginia. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21100

iss073e0685684 (Aug. 21, 2025) --- Underneath a starry night sky, the city lights of New Delhi, India, and its surrounding suburbs glitter below Earth's atmospheric glow and at the edge of the Himalayas. This photograph was taken at approximately 2:55 a.m. local time as the International Space Station orbited 260 miles above.

The city lights of New Delhi, India, underneath a starry night sky

ISS046e012758 (01/18/2016) --- This long exposure image of Northern India was taken by astronauts on the International Space Station while the Earth was shrouded in darkness. Major cities in view include New Delhi, on the left side of the image, and Lahore (right), which is located to the northwest of New Delhi.

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 46 crew

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S63-06447 (15-16 May 1963) --- The Great Indian Desert, located west of New Delhi, India, as photographed from the Mercury-Atlas 9 (MA-9) capsule by astronaut L. Gordon Cooper Jr., during his 22-orbit MA-9 spaceflight. Photo credit: NASA

Great Indian Desert photographed during MA-9 flight

Earth observation taken by the Expedition 28 crew

ISS028-E-029679 (21 Aug. 2011) --- A night time view of India-Pakistan borderlands is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 28 crew member on the International Space Station. Clusters of yellow lights on the Indo-Gangetic Plain of northern India and northern Pakistan reveal numerous cities both large and small in this photograph. Of the hundreds of clusters, the largest are the metropolitan areas associated with the capital cities of Islamabad, Pakistan in the foreground and New Delhi, India at the top?for scale these metropolitan areas are approximately 700 kilometers apart. The lines of major highways connecting the larger cities also stand out. More subtle but still visible at night are the general outlines of the towering and partly cloud-covered Himalayan ranges immediately to the north (left). A striking feature of this photograph is the line of lights, with a distinctly more orange hue, snaking across the central part of the image. It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view. This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between the countries of India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking between the two countries. A similar fenced zone separates India?s eastern border from Bangladesh (not visible). This image was taken with a 16-mm lens, which provides the wide field of view, as the space station was tracking towards the southeast across the subcontinent of India. The station crew took the image as part of a continuous series of frames, each frame taken with a one-second exposure time to maximize light collection ? unfortunately, this also causes blurring of some ground features. The distinct, bright zone above the horizon (visible at top) is produced by airglow, a phenomena caused by excitation of atoms and molecules high in the atmosphere (above 80 kilometers, or 50 miles altitude) by ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Part of the ISS Permanent Multipurpose Module, or PMM, and a solar panel array are visible at right.

Region Hit by Large Pakistan Quake as Shown by NASA Spacecraft

On September 24 at 11:29 GMT, a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck in south-central Pakistan at a relatively shallow depth of 20 kilometers. The earthquake occurred as the result of oblique strike-slip motion, consistent with rupture within the Eurasian tectonic plate. Tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi as well as Karachi in Pakistan. Even though the immediate area to the epicenter is sparsely populated, the majority of houses are of mud brick construction and damage is expected to be extensive. The perspective view, looking to the east, shows the location of the epicenter in Pakistan's Makran fold belt. The image is centered near 27 degrees north latitude, 65.5 degrees east longitude, and was acquired December 13, 2012. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitor the changing surface of our planet. ASTER is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on Terra. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and data products. The broad spectral coverage and high spectral resolution of ASTER provides scientists in numerous disciplines with critical information for surface mapping and monitoring of dynamic conditions and temporal change. Example applications are: monitoring glacial advances and retreats; monitoring potentially active volcanoes; identifying crop stress; determining cloud morphology and physical properties; wetlands evaluation; thermal pollution monitoring; coral reef degradation; surface temperature mapping of soils and geology; and measuring surface heat balance. The U.S. science team is located at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The Terra mission is part of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. More information about ASTER is available at <a href="http://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/" rel="nofollow">asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/</a>. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team Image Addition Date: 2013-09-24 <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a> <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission. Follow us on <a href="http://twitter.com/NASA_GoddardPix" rel="nofollow">Twitter</a> Like us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenbelt-MD/NASA-Goddard/395013845897?ref=tsd" rel="nofollow">Facebook</a> Find us on <a href="http://instagram.com/nasagoddard?vm=grid" rel="nofollow">Instagram</a>

Old Night Vision Meets New

NASA image acquired November 11-12, 2012. On November 12, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured the top nighttime image of city, village, and highway lights near Delhi, India. For comparison, the lower image shows the same area one night earlier, as observed by the Operational Line Scan (OLS) system on a Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) spacecraft. Since the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force has operated DMSP in order to observe clouds and other weather variables in key wavelengths of infrared and visible light. Since 1972, the DMSP satellites have included the Operational Linescan System (OLS), which gives weather forecasters some ability to see in the dark. It has been a highly successful sensor, but it is dependent on older technology with lower resolution than most scientists would like. And for many years, DMSP data were classified. Through improved optics and “smart” sensing technology, the VIIRS “day-night band,” is ten to fifteen times better than the OLS system at resolving the relatively dim lights of human settlements and reflected moonlight. Each VIIRS pixel shows roughly 740 meters (0.46 miles) across, compared to the 3-kilometer footprint (1.86 miles) of DMSP. Beyond the resolution, the new sensor can detect dimmer light sources. And since the VIIRS measurements are fully calibrated (unlike DMSP), scientists now have the precision required to make quantitative measurements of clouds and other features. “In contrast to the Operational Line Scan system, the imagery from the new day-night band is almost like a nearsighted person putting on glasses for the first time and looking at the Earth anew,” says Steve Miller, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University. “VIIRS has allowed us to bring this coarse, blurry view of night lights into clearer focus. Now we can see things in such great detail and at such high precision that we’re really talking about a new kind of measurement.” Unlike a film camera that captures a photograph in one exposure, VIIRS produces an image by repeatedly scanning a scene and resolving it as millions of individual picture elements, or pixels. The day-night band goes a step further, determining on-the-fly whether to use its low, medium, or high-gain mode. If a pixel is very bright, a low-gain mode on the sensor prevents the pixel from over-saturating. If the pixel is dark, the signal will be amplified. “On a hand-held camera, there’s a nighttime setting where the shutter will stay open much longer than it would under daylight imaging conditions,” says Chris Elvidge, who leads the Earth Observation Group at NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center. “The day-night band is similar. It increases the exposure time—the amount of time that it’s collecting photons for pixels.” NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using Suomi NPP VIIRS and DMSP OLS data provided courtesy of Chris Elvidge (NOAA National Geophysical Data Center). Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, NOAA, and the Department of Defense. Caption by Mike Carlowicz. Instrument: Suomi NPP - VIIRS Credit: <a href="http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/" rel="nofollow"> NASA Earth Observatory</a> Click here to view all of the <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/NightLights/" rel="nofollow"> Earth at Night 2012 images </a> Click here to <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=79846" rel="nofollow"> read more </a> about this image <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">NASA image use policy.</a> <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html" rel="nofollow">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a> enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific