March 14, 2012
Mar Del Fuego
Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire, was what Magellan named the tip of South America in 1520. He had seen the fires set by local inhabitants who did not want the Portuguese explorer to set foot on their land.
A new page in the history of this distant part of our globe is now being written. Oil has been discovered off the eastern shore of Tierra del Fuego, and Argentina is building offshore platforms to access it. Brightly lit, they appear from orbit as constellations—not in the starry sky, but on the surface of the sea. Collectively, they are one of the most brightly-lit areas I have seen anywhere on Earth (except for Las Vegas, which still holds the title). From my orbital perspective, this is no longer Tierra del Fuego but Mar del Fuego.
In these pictures taken from Space Station, the dim lights from Tierra del Fuego, visible in the background in the first image below, do not hold a candle to the bright lights of the offshore oil platforms. Click on the images to see them larger.
[...] Pettit wrote a blog post about viewing the oil rigs off of southern Argentina from space. They are surprisingly bright. [...]
Pingback by Friday Links — March 16, 2012 @ 9:03 am
Dear sirs, from the second picture it seems that the platforms are not really close to Tierra del Fuego but closer to Malvinas islands and the coast of Chubut. I guess I can see both Gran Malvina and Soledad (the two biggest islands of Malvinas) and Valdez peninsula.
Tierra del Fuego, itself an island shared by Argentina and Chile, is far from the platforms, see:
http://g.co/maps/tk2jg
By the way, most of the oil exploration right now is not carried on by Argentina but from British companies
Comment by Pablo J. Rogina — March 19, 2012 @ 11:25 am
If you manage to create an alternative zodiac, will you name the constellations after animals?
Comment by Rob Verhoeven — March 20, 2012 @ 3:29 pm
Thank you for sharing this…..i doubt many of us will ever have the opportunity to see such a view! i hope that, with your permission, i can share this with my astronomy group. Please let me know and when you come back, i’d love to have you speak to the society on your work!!
Best regards,
Liz
Comment by Liz — March 21, 2012 @ 8:38 am
It is interesting that one can envision the geologic structures that have trapped oil from your photo of Mar del Fuego. Are the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico clustered like these?
Comment by Pam — March 29, 2012 @ 2:17 am
As already mention by Pablo (2) what you see is Islas Malvinas. And due to the shape of the lights, I am not sure that they are oil rigs but fishing boats located in international waters, just one meter far from Argentine and Malvinas fishing limit areas. All the dot that are together I think are just “legal” fishing boats arround a good fishing area.
Don is right that there are many offshore oil rigs in Tierra del Fuego (south of patagonia), but the photo is east of Patagonia and North of Malvinas
Comment by Sebastian — April 4, 2012 @ 3:10 pm