NASA’s (fake) satellite image of India in Diwali

You must have seen it at least once. Maybe you have liked it, or commented 'Wow!'. A beautiful map of India adorned with dazzling colored lights all over it. This is supposed to be India as seen from NASA satellites during Diwali, the festival of lights.

But something is wrong, isn’t it?

The image shows white, blue, green and red lights in DIFFERENT areas. Do you think some areas in India use red lights and some use only green?

This is not Diwali night seen from satellite. It’s an image created by an institute in US to show the population growth in India. The white lights are the areas of dense population before 1992, blue, green and red lights showing areas of growing population in 1992, 1998 and 2003. So these are night images of India taken over years, and processed to create an illustration.

NASA got apparently frustrated and published an actual image of India during Diwali of 2012. It is black and white and looks no different than any other night. All it shows is where the cities are.

You can have a look at this actual image on the NASA site at

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php