Seen viral NASA Diwali photo? Here's the truth about it

New Delhi, Nov 05: Every year the Internet's favourite 'NASA' Diwali photo makes the rounds. The only thing is people claim that it's a picture of India taken from space on Diwali night. And, it's not just one photo. It's a many images stitched together with overlaid data.

The one fact that's accurate is that it's a picture of lights. The white lights show where city were visible before 1992, blue lights for 1992, green lights for 1998 and red for 2003.

On the occasion of Diwali, NASA's fake Diwali picture has found a way to get viral on social media again. The graphical image shared on social media claims that it is the night view of an illuminated India captured by NASA.

In reality, any extra light produced during Diwali is so subtle that it is likely imperceptible when observed from space.

However, NASA shared a real image of the festival of lights on Twitter.

On November 12, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime view of southern Asia. The image is based on data collected by the VIIRS "day-night band," which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared. The image has been brightened to make the city lights easier to distinguish.

Most of the bright areas are cities and towns in India, the country with the world's largest Hindu population. India is home to more than 1.2 billion people and has 30 cities with populations over 1 million. (For comparison, China has 62 cities with more than 1 million residents and the United States has 9). Cities in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan are also visible near the edges of the image.

An image that claims to show the region lit for Diwali has been circulating on social media websites and the Internet in recent years. In fact, it does not show what it claims. That image, based on data from the Operational Linescan System flown on U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites, is a color-composite created in 2003 by NOAA scientist Chris Elvidge to highlight population growth over time. In that image, white areas show city lights that were visible prior to 1992, while blue, green, and red shades indicate city lights that became visible in 1992, 1998, and 2003 respectively.