weather

Newest US weather satellite captures Hurricane Bill in a “full-disk” view of the Earth.

August 19th, 2009 |

Author: admin

Remote-sensing scientists call a satellite image that captures an entire hemisphere of the Earth in one view a “full-disk” image. The delivery of the first full-disk image from a newly launched weather satellite is an exciting milestone in the mission. It provides scientists and engineers with incontrovertible evidence that a new satellite—as well as the communications systems needed to deliver the images back to Earth—is ready to do its job.

On August 17, 2009, at 1:31 p.m. EST, the latest NASA/NOAA geostationary weather satellite, called GOES-14, returned its first full-disk thermal infrared (IR) image, showing radiation with a wavelength of 10.7 micrometers emanating from Earth. Infrared images are useful because they provide information about temperatures. A wavelength of 10.7 micrometers is 15 times longer than the longest wavelength of light (red) that people can see, but scientists can turn the data into a picture by having a computer display cold temperatures as bright white and hot temperatures as black. The hottest (blackest) features in the scene are land surfaces; the coldest (whitest) features in the scene are clouds.