Warning: An attempt is made to geographically register the data but this may be off at times. These images are not intended as a working fire detection resource, they are made available only as interesting observations that anybody could make from the publicly available AVHRR data. Six main types of maps are presented here: Pass coverage maps Each satellite flyover is called a pass. These maps show the exact area covered and the sun's altitude (areas with positive sun altitudes are in daylight as is obvious from the coloring). Channel 2 or 3 view of the entire pass A view of the nongeographically corrected image from channel 2 or 3 is given with boundaries overlaid. This shows cloud cover and gives some idea of where the resolution is good or bad. Smoke plume maps These are daytime views usually showing 3 channel color composite images registered geographically. Channel 1 is colored green. This channel is from visible light. Lakes with sediments may show a green color, clear lakes appear darker. Channel 2 is colored red, and is from the near infrared. Vegetation has a high reflectance in the near infrared so vegetated areas may show up as red in the final image. Channel 3 is colored blue. This channel is partly reflected infrared sunlight and partly thermal emission. Because of the thermal component warmer objects are more blue in the final image, and conversely, cooler objects are less blue, that is more yellow. Clouds often appear yellow since they are typically somewhat cool. Smoke plumes often appear yellow-green. The fire area itself may appear somewhat blue. Channel 3 maps These may be nighttime or daytime views, they will be grouped with either the smoke plume image or the shaded relief maps showing the detected hot spots. Fires often show as bright areas, sometimes with a black border due to sensor overshoot. For daytime views channel 3 images may be useful to see just where the major fire areas occur under the smoke. For nighttime views channel 3 images are useful to see the nature of the signal and where clouds block the view. False positives may be better understood by looking at the channel 3 nighttime views. Finder maps This is a shaded relief map with any detected hot spots enlarged to be easily visible. The actual size of a fire cannot be judged from this type of map. Detection maps This is a shaded relief map with any detected hot spots plotted as detected on the map. Such a map is much more useful than the channel 3 image alone for estimating positions. Any size estimates should use this map or the channel 3 image. The time on the maps is Universal Time. Captions may include local time.