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Earth Science

Suomi's Stunning View From Space

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 26, 2012
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Image: Suomi NPP’s View of North America
“Suomi NPP’s VIIRS instrument returned this hi-resolution full-disc image of the Earth from several passes made Jan. 4, 2012. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) mission represents a critical first step in building the next-generation Earth-observing satellite system that will collect data on both long-term climate change and short-term weather conditions.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

13 responses to “Suomi's Stunning View From Space”

  1. Hallie Wright says:
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    I’m sorry, but there is just something wrong with this picture. North America loos about twice as big as it should look, compared to the size of the Earth. When you look at North America on a globe, the angular size is about half that of the diameter. Here it’s about 80%. Maybe this is some weird projection?

    • John Thomas says:
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      It’s probably related to the fact that the picture is from 22,000 miles or so away from the earth. When you are closer, North America would look even bigger. Geostationary satellites can not see the whole half of the globe. That’s one reason they can’t usually be used at the north or south poles.

      • Stuart J. Gray says:
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        NPP’s orbit is only ~500 miles up.
        So it is impossible for it to have taken that picture in one image.

        “Dish has Earth.A camera on one of their sats at 22,000 miles up”

        Yes but the resolution of the images from this satellite would put the GEO birds pics to shame.

        Now it you want to see some real cool imaging that could be done from GEO, google “Moire” (Membrane Optical Imager)

      • Hallie Wright says:
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        I’m sorry, but I can look at a globe from any distance over
        the surface of that globe where I can see, like in this picture, the whole
        globe easily in my field of view, and it doesn’t really look like this picture.
        But yes, if you press your face up against Mexico, North America looks pretty
        big. This picture doesn’t look like I’m pressing my face up against anything,
        though.

        BTW, I can certainly make any kind of artificial projection I want on a sphere. Say, there
        the regions around the nadir are expanded relative to regions at the limb. This
        would, in fact, be the case if you were observing from close up.

        But this picture is just fundamentally NOT the way the Earth looks. While NASA
        seems to want this picture to look iconic, it actually looks fundamentally
        screwy. The older iconic pictures of the Earth from space don’t look anything
        like this.

        • Paul451 says:
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          Did you see Colin’s comment? And my reply. The perspective is 2000km above the surface. So it’s the equivalent of having your eyes 3 inches from the surface of a 20″ globe.

          “While NASA seems to want this picture to look iconic”

          It’s just one person.

          • Hallie Wright says:
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            Your explanation proves my point.

            You say it’s the equivalent of having your eyes 3 inches away from a 20 inch globe. Well, you know, if I had my eye there, the Earth would subtend an angle of about 101 degrees. The view I’m looking at here sure doesn’t look that big. Where I’m sitting, looking at my screen, it subtends about 2 degrees, which is a bit larger than what it would look like if I were on the Moon. But then again, you may sit a LOT closer to your screen than I do to mine! That gives me a headache just thinking about it. Doesn’t your screen kind of steam up?

            No, this is a very poor representation of what I would see from up near the Moon. It doesn’t look like the Earth as seen from anywhere.

    • Paul451 says:
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      On a sphere there isn’t any projection. It may be a fish-eye effect, however, since it’s a composite image taken from multiple passes, the satellite is a lot closer than the image suggests, hence…

      • Colin Seftor says:
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        From the person who made the image:

        “I used the l2gen program written by members of the Ocean Biology Processing Group to generate Earth surface reflectances in bands M5 (662-682 nm), M4 (545-565 nm), and M2 (436-454 nm) from NOAA SDR files collected over four orbits on January 4, 2012. I then mapped the reflectances for each of the orbits to a vertical, near-sided perspective projection with the perspective point 2124 kilometers above 20 North by 100 West and composited the four orbits together into the “marble” that you see.”

        • Paul451 says:
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          “with the perspective point 2124 kilometers above”

          So about 16% of the diameter Earth. So the equivalent of sitting 3 inches from a 20 inch globe. Definite fish-eye.

  2. Saturn1300 says:
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    I can see this image live anytime.Dish has Earth.A camera on one of their sats at 22,000 miles up.I check it daily.Better view than ISS.That is what it looks like heading in or out of LEO.The Moon has shown up.I have seen the Moon disappear behind the Earth as the sat moves in its orbit.How many  have seen that?I was lucky enough to make a video,but have lost it.Private industry does it again for free.How much was that sat that Al Gore suggested?

    • ToSeek says:
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      “GoreSat” (actually now called DSCOVR) has been built – at a cost of a little over $100 million – and is sitting here at the Goddard Space Flight Center (I passed the box it lives in a couple of weeks ago – don’t know why they had it out) awaiting enough additional cash to actually launch it.

      Most of the talk is about the images it would take, but the key instrument is a radiometer that would provide the best measurements ever of Earth’s albedo and radiation budget, critical items in determining what’s going on with global warming.

      • Colin Seftor says:
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        One should also point out that, from geosynchronous orbit, one still cannot see the full sunlit side of the Earth.  From the L1 point, where DSCOVR would be perched, you can.  This is critical for the aforementioned radiation budget measurement.  When questions arose as to the scientific validity of the mission, the National Academy of Sciences took a look at it,  and their conclusion was that the mission was, indeed, scientifically valid and important.

        A final point; the space weather (solar observing) instruments currently at the L1 point are long past their designed lifetime and badly need to be replaced.  DSCOVR has instruments onboard that will continue these measurements as well.  Both the Air Force and NOAA are keenly interested in getting DSCOVR launched for this reason alone.

  3. retired_geek says:
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    As great as this image is I think that the images released if “solar loops” this past week are even more spectacular. An example can be see at the National Geographic web site. 

    http://news.nationalgeograp

    I don’t know much about the technology NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory used to capture these images but the shots of the sun’s surface without a circular mask are stunning.