Smoke from Siberian fires blows all the way to Canada — and is seen by a satellite nearly a million miles from Earth

NASA's EPIC camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft, known as DSCOVR, captured this image of Earth on June 9, 2018, when it was 993,764 miles from Earth. Bluish-gray wildfire smoke is visible. (Image: NASA GFSC. Animation: Tom Yulsman) We've become accustomed to striking imagery of wildfires captured by earth-monitoring satellites, including weather satellites stationed about 26,000 miles from the surface. That may seem amazing enough (it always does to me). But check out the image above of a plume of wildfire smoke so big and thick that it was visible to a satellite nearly a million miles away. Make sure to click on the image so see a larger version, and then click again to enlarge it. You'll see a faint yet visible pall of smoke mainly over Canada. It's bluish in contrast to clouds, which are much whiter.