Earth Observation | Universe Today

UPDATE: Information about both SMOS and the Proba-2 satelite are on ESA Television. The program loop is embedded at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

Last night at 2:50 am Central European Time, two European Space Agency (ESA) satellites were successfully launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia. The Rockot launch vehicle was carrying both the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite, and the Proba-2 satellite. SMOS will monitor the moisture exchange of the Earth between the ocean, air and land as well as the salinity of the oceans and the moisture of the soil in an effort to better understand how these factors influence the climate of our planet. Proba-2 will test out various instruments, including a small wide angle optical camera, and instruments for monitoring the plasma environment in orbit and the Sun's corona. Read more…

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U.S. satellite measurements show Arctic sea ice extent in 2009 – the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by floating ice – was the third lowest since satellite measurements were first made in 1979. While the ice area at minimum was an increase from the past two years, it is still well below the average for the past 30 years. In the video above, Tom Wagner, NASA's cryosphere program manager, describes the shrinking of Arctic sea ice and the significance of the problem for the rest of the planet.
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Data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite has been used to create a 3-D map of rainfall over the Phillipines from September 21-28, 2008. Armed with both a passive microwave sensor and a space-borne precipitation radar, TRMM has been measuring the amount of rainfall created by the tropical cyclone, Typhoon Ketsana (known in the Phillippines as "Ondoy"). A record 13.43 inches of rain fell in Manila in six hours between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time, which is equivalent to about a month's worth of rain for the area. In just 24 hours, Ketsana dropped 17.9 inches (455 mm) of rain in Manila in just 24 hours on Saturday, September 26.
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Is Earth's gravity field as intriguing and misshapen as this image above? We're about to find out. The sexy looking Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer or GOCE satellite has completed its calibration and is now in its science orbit to map the tiny variations of Earth's gravity in unprecedented detail. And it turns out the sun's current period of low solar activity has a side benefit for the GOCE mission. Less solar activity means a calmer environment for GOCE in its low Earth orbit, so its current orbit of 255 km is a few kilometers lower than engineers had originally planned. This is good news – the gravity measurements being made at the moment will be even more accurate.
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This isn't a special effect image from a new catastrophe movie; it is an actual satellite image of the dust storm sweeping over and around eastern Australia, heading across the Tasman Sea toward New Zealand. A dense wall of dust descended upon Sydney on Sept. 23, creating an apocalyptic scene (see these images from Boston Globe's Big Picture) and the river of dust continues unabated across water. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the storm on September 24, at 11:10 a.m., New Zealand time (23:10 UTC on September 23). The distance between the far northern edge of the plume and the southern edge is about 3,450 kilometers (2,700 miles), roughly equivalent to the distance between New York City and Los Angeles. Below, see how the storm progressed across the Sea later in the day.
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Here's a look at Typhoon Choi-Wan. This is a big storm covering a huge area, and luckily it is now weakening as it continues to move northeast over the Pacific Ocean. This image was taken on Sept. 18, 2009, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua Satellite. Although the storm maintains its tightly wound symmetric shape, the striking clear eye is gone, unlike the image below, which was taken on Sept. 15. Now a category 3 storm, Choi-wan now has winds of about 200 kilometers per hour (125 miles per hour or 110 knots), whereas on the 15th, sustained winds were clocked at between 250 kilometers per hour (155 miles per hour or 135 knots) and 240 km/hr (150 mph or 130 knots), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. The storm continues to skirt along the coast of Japan, causing huge waves, but is not expected to make landfall.
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What a gorgeous shot of our blue planet! This Envisat satellite image taken on August 19, 2009 captures a plankton bloom larger than the country of Greece stretching across the Barents Sea off the tip of northern Europe. The land visible across the bottom of the image belongs to Norway (left) and Russia’s Murmansk Oblast.
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As only a British tabloid (and Fox News) could, reports came out this week of the Loch Ness Monster being spotted on Google Earth. "This amazing image on Google Earth could be the elusive proof that the Loch Ness Monster exists," The Sun reported. Well, for one thing, this doesn't look *anything* like Nessie. Doesn't he have a long black neck? And another thing about this: it looks surprisingly like a …. boat. Imagine that, a boat on a lake captured by Google Earth! Astounding!
Look closely and you'll see the squared off back end of the boat (the stern), the rounded stern bow in front, and the tentacle-looking things are just the boat's wake. This looks very much like another image of a boat on Loch Ness on Bing (below). Click on the picture to get to the image on Bing and zoom out for the full effect.
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Hurricane Bill kept its distance from the US mainland, seemingly skirting along the eastern seaboard and fitting perfectly within the coastline curves on this NASA satellite image. Thankfully, the storm largely missed the eastern states, with the center of the storm well off the coast. It appears Bill will keep its distance from the Canadian coast as well. It has now been downgraded to a tropical storm, and is expected to weaken over the next 24 hours. As of late Sunday night, the storm had maximum sustained winds near 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour with higher gusts. This image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, taken at 2:00 p.m. EDT (14:00 UTC) on August 23, 2009.
Source: NASA Earth Observation website

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This just in — the NASA/NOAA satellite GOES-14 has just released video taken on August 20 (that's today!) of Hurricane Bill, the first hurricane of the season. This spectacular video is a collection of a few quick movies put together by the GOES-14 team and includes an impressive zoom-out, showing how big the hurricane is, relative to the hemisphere. Yes, Bill is large, with sustained winds of 217 kph (135 mph), making it a powerful Category 4 storm. The winds extend outward up to 80 miles from the center. Bill stretches more than 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) across, and the storm’s partially cloud-filled eye is nearly 50 kilometers (31 miles) wide.

See an image below of Bill from NASA's MODIS satellite, taken on August 19, 2009.
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Ever wonder about all the different data that satellites are collecting as they orbit Earth? This video is a sample of Bella Gaia, a 45-minute movie is meant to be watched in an immersive theater, such as a fulldome planetarium. This clip is an audio visual "Living Atlas" journey of our world, showing the beauty and fragility of planet Earth as seen through satellite data. Created by director and violist Kenji Williams, the The movie is based on the stunning orbital imagery created by SCISS' Uniview software and NASA, and shows data ranging from oil consumption and air traffic, over Earth's magnetosphere and polar sub storms to time-lapse images of the Arctic ice melt. It's a new way to look at Earth, and hopefully will instill some of the awe that the first "Earthrise" images brought. Look for the full version coming soon to an immersive theater near you. More info on Bella Gaia.

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The LCROSS spacecraft took a look back at Earth, and guess what it saw? Evidence of intelligence? Not so much. But it did see evidence of life. On Aug. 1, 2009, the LCROSS spacecraft took a gander at Earth to help calibrate and test its science payload. During the Earth observations, the spacecraft's spectrometers were able to detect the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and possibly vegetation.
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Last week the US government released more than a thousand intelligence images of Arctic ice that have been used to help scientists study the impact of climate change. The images were taken by spy satellites, as part of the Medea program, which lets scientists request spy pictures from environmentally sensitive locations around the world. After they were taken, the Bush Administration released the photographs to the scientists but deemed them "unsuitable for public release." Earlier this month, the National Academy of Sciences recommended the Obama Administration declassify the photos, which they did within a few hours of the recommendation.

Various blogs are saying these dramatic images are faked, but since they are available through the US Geological Survey , that hardly seems likely. Over 700 images show changes of sea ice in various recent years from six sites around the Arctic Ocean, with an additional 500 images of 22 sites in the United States.
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The Grand Canyon is an awesome sight on Earth — one of the seven natural wonders of the world – and it looks breathtaking from space, too. This image was taken by the Envisat satellite, showing canyon walls, rock structures, old lava flows, buttes, ravines, stair-step topography in hues of pink, violet and gray.
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Topographic maps are some of the most used and valuable maps for both government and the general public. Now, NASA and Japan have released a new digital topographic map of Earth Monday that covers more of our planet than ever before and was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, on board NASA's Terra spacecraft. It is available online to users everywhere at no cost.
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