A Stormy Blue Marble

Look at this beautiful planet! This video was compiled from data relayed by the Himawari satellite during October of 2017. The satellite is in a geostationary orbit, meaning it stays above the western Pacific all the time as it orbits at the same rate that the earth rotates. Meanwhile, day turns to night and again to day, and weather systems move along the earth's surface.  

(YouTube link)

The original resolution of the video was 5500 x 5500, but at YouTube, it's 8K, which is still pretty good. Because of the cloud cover, it's hard to see any land masses besides Australia. However, you can distinguish Japan by the way it lights up at night. Scott Manley posted this as a sample, a part of a longer explanation of how the images were captured.

The Advanced Baseline Imager is the state of the art in meteorological imaging and it's been flying for a couple of years on the Himawari 8 and more recently on GOES-16. Today GOES-S is scheduled to launch to ultimately replace GOES-West so I thought it would be interesting to explain how the specialized camera works and to show off some pretty pictures it's taken.

(YouTube link

-via Metafilter


Newest 1
Newest 1 Comment

Login to comment.
Email This Post to a Friend
"A Stormy Blue Marble"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More