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It started on Facebook, then quickly went viral: This photograph of India at night, shot from space and composited by NASA, has been widely described as portraying the subcontinent during Diwali. The Diwali festival or "festival of lights" is an important Hindu holiday; the name stems from Deepavali or "row of lamps."
However, that may not be what the image portrays. Business Insider contacted NASA seeking answers, and provided this somewhat confusing explanation:
The photo is an overlay of shots highlighting India's burgeoning population over several years. The white lights were the only illumination visible before 1992. The blue lights appeared in 1992. The green lights in 1998. And the red lights appeared in 2003.
What's not clear is that the explanation claims the white lights "were the only illumination visible before 1992" and that the colored lights appeared in subsequent years. If this photograph is to highlight population growth, doesn't it make sense that perhaps NASA changed the color of the new lights appearing in '92, '98 and '03 to provide overlays as a visual marker of growth?
If this photo is what the viralists originally claimed, it implies that different regions of India coordinated with one another to celebrate Diwali with dedicated colors for their regions. And it doesn't explain why Myanmar, which as far as I know does not celebrate the festival, is off to the right with a bunch of red lights.
I'm not familiar enough with Diwali and how it is celebrated in India to determine if this makes sense. Anyone with more experience care to sound off?
Comments
whatever you claim but it shows that India enjoys at the fullest on Diwali and the whole country is full of lights, happiness and blessings.....
"who cares its diwali.......so enjoy.... :) "
This probably represents Economic growth, not population growth. The areas that are dark (Bihar, North Eastern states) are the areas in India which are comparatively backward in terms of economic growth, whereas the brightest lights are in the metropolis'. The areas that are dark also represent a very large part of the population, so the population growth theory doesn't make any sense. I'm not sure about the varying colors, but that seems like the most logical explanation.
The image is most certainly not of Diwali. For one, the idea of different regions celebrating with different colored lights is ridiculous. Some people have claimed that the colors are because of the fireworks that fill the sky on Diwali night. But that doesn't explain why the illumination is brightest along the Indus river in predominantly muslim Pakistan--Diwali is a hindu festival.
Scientists have their own strange way of creating shorthand sentences, and so do mapping specialists. Remember all those false-color pictures of the cosmos that NASA creates? This is almost certainly similar. Those aren't lights, despite the sentence wording -- those are colored dots. They represent lighting, as seen at night from high up, at 4 different times.
Think of it as a design problem: How, on a single map, would you show the changes in lighting visible at night at 4 different time points in history? The most sensible way is to use 4 layers and colorize the different layers. That way you can see exactly where the changes occur. It is an elegant, easily understood, data-dense display of very complex information.
And then some internet cretins came along and declared that the colors are really like that on the ground. Morons are everywhere.
I assume the wording should have been this, in order to be understood by us outsiders (outside the project):
The photo is an overlay of shots of night lighting visible from space, highlighting India's burgeoning population over several years. The white color indicates night-time illumination visible before 1992. The blue color indicates (white) lighting that first appeared in 1992. The green color indicates lights that first appeared in 1998. And the red color indicates lights that first appeared in 2003.
This is definitely not Diwali. Mostly what Ken K said previously is correct. But it does not really indicate population growth either. What it does indicate is previously economically backward regions experienced enough economic advancement so as to be able to afford enough (white colored) electric lights as to be visible from space. People lived in those areas before but survived using small oil or kerosine lamps because there was no electricity. The area with the highest concentration of red is the state of Orissa a backward place that is slowly growing.
The original source of the image is the NOAA, in about 2004. You can see it here:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/dmsp/interest/india.html
WHETHER ITS DIWALI OR ECONOMIC GROWTH, WHY DO YOU EUROPEANS AND AMERICANS HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT?
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i prefer to keep the purity beauty n romance of diwali entact..and not put so much logic into it...shows how indians know to celebrate festivals together as one country...
If this picture represents the celebration of Diwali...it is utterly sad, because most of the fireworks are made by bonded child labour in India.