Whole Earth images, Does any satellite provide regularly updated ones? Options

[Phil Stooke]

Ted's right. LOIRP has done that image, but the linked version is not theirs.

Phil

[machi]

One of the first attempts to image Earth from space, was possibly from Able-1 (Pioneer 2?) probe, but failed, because major part of Earth seen from spacecraft was in darkness.

[nilstycho]

I don't think that is from LOIRP, but it is a nice image.

Sorry, I should clarify. You can find the "LOIRP TIFF" linked at the bottom of the page. It apparently weighs 1.2 GB, so I didn't direct-link it.

edit: Aha. You can preview it here.

[dilo]

So huge... did someone made a lighter med-res version?

[elakdawalla]

I don't know if it's true for this one, but when I have downloaded LOIRP TIFFs in the past, I found they had two layers, one of which was empty, but both of which were saved without compression, needlessly doubling the file size. All they have to do is toss the extra layer and use LZW compression and it'd save a lot of people a lot of time (and them a lot of bandwidth).

[Juramike]

Image of Earth taken today at 1800Z (several hours ago). A zoom shows a weird pattern in the IR4 and Water Vapor channels that is roughly funkiest right over Columbia, South Carolina.



It is not evident in the Visible image and only faintly discernible from white background in the IR2 image. (So...colder high altitude contrails? Why not over the busier airports of Atlanta or Charlotte?)

Any guesses??

[nprev]

Gotta be contrails. Answer is that those are high-alt corridors. Near the airports planes are ascending or descending, not cruising @ 30K+ ft., therefore much slower speeds & much shorter ground tracks.

[DFinfrock]

Any guesses??

Not only do contrails not show up over the major airport hubs (where aircraft are indeed at lower levels) the contrails will only show up where there is sufficient moisture in the upper atmosphere for the contrails to persist long enough to be imaged from space. There was obviously more moisture available over SC at the time this photo was taken, than in areas farther south, where the contrails do not persist.

David

[Juramike]

Thanks!

I poked around other time points on the same day, and same time point on different days and didn't see the same phenomenon. Must've just hit the atmospheric conditions just right over the Carolinas. Color us lucky...'till the snowstorm hits this weekend.

[Juramike]

The Dundee Satellite Receiving Station home page (DSRS) (here) has just activated a very neat feature. They have a clickable calendar at the top of the screen, you can now easily click back and forth through the archive.

With a fast enough connection, this can almost be a stepwise animation.

[Juramike]

24 hour animated sequence of Earth images in Aquavision from May 27th 0600 UTC to May 28th 0300 UTC:

Available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4646189185/

[stevesliva]

Great new mosaic from LROC:
http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/news/index.php?/a...m-the-Moon.html

[scalbers]

Has anyone mentioned this link showing real-time Meteosat images?

http://oiswww.eumetsat.org/IPPS/html/MSG/IMAGERY/

[ugordan]

This is neat - July 11 solar eclipse seen on the DishEARTH channel.

[Juramike]

Digging around, I found some really neat high-phase angle shots of Earth taken by the SEVERI Meteosat near the December 21 solstice. This is taken at local midnight, so we are seeing the midnight sun over Antarctica.

At this high phase angle, the Near IR data isn't too bright and can be gently blended into a channel mix with the Vis R-G and Vis G-B to make a pretty RGB composite.

There's a neat specular reflection off Antarctica ice or smooth embayed water.



Check out the REALLY high res image on my flickr site (processing details there, too.): http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/4937955948/