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Envisat sees smoke from Europe's worst peacetime fire

12 December 2005

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This Envisat MERIS Full Resolution mode image was acquired 11 December 2005 at 10:45 GMT, and shows the smoke cloud from the Buncefield oil depot fire. The depot is located on the edge of Hemel Hempstead, above the cloud around the middle of the image crop seen here (about where the tendril of white cloud touches the black smoke) with the conurbation of London to the south. The image has a resolution of 300 metres.

Credits: ESA

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Smoke fills the sky north of London, 11 December 2005, following a series of explosions at Buncefield fuel depot. A series of massive explosions struck a fuel depot near London before dawn Sunday, filling the sky with orange flames and thick black smoke and injuring 36 people, four of them seriously.

Credits: AFP PHOTO / JOHN D. MCHUGH

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The smoke cloud from the Buncefield oil depot fire on 11 December 2005, acquired at the same time as the MERIS image by a second Envisat instrument, the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR), an imaging radiometer used to study land and ocean surfaces as well as clouds, returning data on temperature as well as optical characteristics.

Credits: ESA

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This Envisat MERIS Reduced Resolution mode image was acquired 11 December 2005 at 10:45 GMT, and shows the smoke cloud from the Buncefield oil depot fire. The depot is located on the edge of Hemel Hempstead, above the cloud around the middle of the image crop seen here (about where the tendril of white cloud touches the black smoke) with the conurbation of London to the south. The full image has a width of 1284 km and a spatial resolution of 1200 metres.

Credits: ESA