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Omaha Steve

(99,073 posts)
Wed May 27, 2020, 02:27 PM May 2020

Tech made to find galaxies sets its sights on wildfires


FULL story: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/tech-made-to-find-galaxies-sets-its-sights-on-wildfires/

by Rachael Meyer on 19 May 2020

In mid-October, 1991, a wildfire swept across the hillsides of northern Oakland, California, killing 25 people and injuring 150 more. By the time it was under control, around 1,500 acres of wildlands and urban areas had been scorched, including 3,000 homes.

At the time of the fire, Carl Pennypacker was working at the University of California, Berkeley, as an astrophysicist, using novel technology to search hundreds of galaxies a night for tiny bright spots that signaled exploding supernovae. His group became known as the Supernovae Cosmology Project, and won many awards including the Nobel Prize for discovering that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

However, the events of October 1991 set his sights a little closer to home. The Oakland fire had blazed through neighborhoods and forests just a few miles from his house, ultimately causing 1.5 billion dollars of damage.

“It was really so obvious that this [work] should be done to help humans,” he told Mongabay.

See the full story at link above.



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Tech made to find galaxies sets its sights on wildfires (Original Post) Omaha Steve May 2020 OP
I was working at NASA Ames at the time lapfog_1 May 2020 #1
Meanwhile, I'll be spotting wildland fires the old fashioned way this summer. DemoTex May 2020 #2

lapfog_1

(29,166 posts)
1. I was working at NASA Ames at the time
Wed May 27, 2020, 02:41 PM
May 2020

and we (NASA) flew a number of missions over the Oakland Hills fire with Infrared cameras that could look through the smoke and discover hot spots and in near real time direct fire crews. The missions were flown by our ER2 ( modified U2 spy planes )

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