Today's image of southern Australia shows a combination of both planned fires and some bushfires.
Fires are often deliberately set by fire officials and controlled in order to clean out dry underbrush and accumulations of debris. The fire burns away the detritus which could otherwise be the ignition for a devastating bushfire that may easily get out of control.
In this image, most of the fires have been planned and are under control, however, there are some that are bushfires which, although started spontaneously, are currently under control by fire officials.
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on May 02, 2013. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner.