English: On November 5, 2018, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of southern Japan.

Japan is a group of volcanic islands—more than 6,800 islands and islets—that lie off the coast of the Asian continent, from offshore of Russia’s Sakhalin Island in the north and stretching south of the tip of the Korean Peninsula. While the country is made up of many islands, the four largest constitute most of the landmass of Japan. Three of Japan’s major islands are seen in this image.

Kyushu is roughly round in overall shape with the coastline indented in a large natural harbor around the city of Nagasaki. To the northeast is Shikoku Island which is heavily mountainous and clad in green vegetation. The island at the top of the image is the southern tip of Honshu, Japan’s largest island. The broad gray arc along Hiroshima Bay on the eastern shore of Honshu marks the human-built city features of Hiroshima and connected metropolitan areas.

The waters around the islands are colored with tans and greens of sediment and, likely, blooms of phytoplankton. Although no red hot spots, which would mark actively burning fires, are visible in this image, the skies above southern Japan are covered with a gray haze. This likely comes from a large number of fires burning north of this image in Japan or, possibly, eastern China or even from Indonesian fires.