> Yes, FIRMS data is what most people use to monitor large strikes that create a significant heat signature. In the middle of the sea you'll usually just see oil platforms generate heat like that.
> A lot of people reading this know this already, but you could see exactly where the bunker busters were being dropped in Iran months ago from FIRMS data within ~15-20min of the strikes.
The lower resolution geostationary satellites transmit every 10 to 15 minutes and the data is made available within 30 minutes of transmission. There are polar orbit satellites which can potentially make detections faster but they only overfly specific regions and are only looking at a small portion of that at a given time. The database itself is updated every 5 minutes.
For Iran, 15 minute latency would mean you got lucky with the cycles of several steps lining up just right.
> Yes, FIRMS data is what most people use to monitor large strikes that create a significant heat signature. In the middle of the sea you'll usually just see oil platforms generate heat like that.
> A lot of people reading this know this already, but you could see exactly where the bunker busters were being dropped in Iran months ago from FIRMS data within ~15-20min of the strikes.