California wildifres from NASA's AQUA satellite
"This roller coaster has taken a dip downward," Mount Wilson Observatory Director Hal McAlister said late today.
More than 164 square miles of southern California are being consumed in an inferno of wildfires. The famous Moumt Wilson Observatory is literally on a survival watch tonight as the flames roar through the area.
McAlister has been blogging updates on the situation, reporting
...the USFS still considers that passage of fire across Mount Wilson is imminent and will be fought aerially rather than with ground personnel. Once the fire is through the area, they can assess the damage by air after the event before they can send in ground personnel. She also confirmed what PJ's monitoring implied, that firefighters have been removed from Red Box.
The observatory, now more than 100 years old, hosted Edwin Hubble's ground-breaking work. The facility is both a historical site and an internationally-reknowned working astronomy resource.
KNX 1070 News Radio is providing continuing live updates on fire status. Sky and Telescope created an animated sequence of images from the observatory's tower cam. Blogger Greg Gehr has created a list of links with fire updates.
About the image of the fires snapped from space:
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image around 2:05 p.m. local time (21:05 UTC) on August 31, 2009. Red outlines indicate high surface temperatures associated with wildfires, and almost reach Mt. Wilson. A long plume of smoke blows away from the fire toward the northeast.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. The Rapid Response Team provides daily images of this area. Caption by Michon Scott.
This is a recent image from the observatory's tower cam, which continued to function despite the loss of one power feed.
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