Month: November 2025

On the left side of this image is a map consisting mainly of blue and purple pixels, but also some pixels that are light green, yellow and even red, indicating higher concentrations of methane. These concentrations were measured by the TROPOMI instrument. On the right-hand side of the image is a satellite photo of an oil industry complex, with finer pixels than on the left, showing a plume-shaped patch of methane concentrations measured by the GHGsat satellite. The similarity is striking, even though the dates differ. This is a methane leak.
News

Chip-Style Flat Lens Overcomes Scalability Hurdle for Far-Infrared Space Cameras

Researchers at SRON and TU Delft have made bolometer detectors using flat lenses on a silicon wafer, solving a major bottleneck in building large cameras. Bolometers form the heart of far-infrared spectrometers that can distinguish colors up to one-millionth of their wavelength. This is needed to observe astrophysical processes such as the birth of stars and galaxies from gas and dust clouds.

In this photograph, the eye first sees a flat object with a pattern of concentric rings on it. If you look more closely, you can see that they are not real rings, but patterns.
Satellite photos surround a white and grey world map, showing concentrations of methane in coloured pixels, ranging from blue for lower concentrations to green and yellow for higher concentrations. Together, the pixels form a plume. The photos are linked to urban areas in Charlotte (US), Bucharest (Romania), Hyderabad (India), Guadalajara (Mexico), Hong Kong (China), Córdoba (Argentina), Bangkok (Thailand), Amman (Jordan), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Ahmedabad (India).