Iranian navy warship fire detected by VIIRS Nightfire

By Tamara Sparks

An Iranian navy warship that caught fire in the early hours of June 2 and sank near the port of Jask was detected by EOG’s VIIRS Nightfire (VNF) product. VNF detected a fire at 2:02 local time with the NOAA-20 satellite VIIRS instrument in two adjacent pixels due west of the port of Jask, with consistent temperatures of 1033 K and 1043 K derived from Planck curve fitting. These temperatures are lower than that of typical gas flares, and the location is not near any known gas flares based on EOG’s 2020 gas flare survey. No fire was detected when the JPSS NPP satellite passed over an hour earlier at 1:11 local time, but a boat was detected at the same location by EOG’s VIIRS Boat Detection (VBD), which observes boats that have their lights on. This indicates that the fires detected are from the navy warship, and that the fire started sometime in between the satellite overpasses.

June 2, 2021