The fires (red dots) visible along the shoreline of Russia’s Khabarovsk Province at the upper left of this image are only a few of the forest fires responsible for the river of smoke spreading eastward over the Sea of Okhotsk and the Kamchatka Peninsula on July 2, 2008. This natural-color image of the area was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on July 2. The large version of the image shows smoke spreading southward as far as Japan.

The high-resolution image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides the image in additional resolutions.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.