A Brand New “Blue Marble” View of Earth

[n2doc]

by NANCY ATKINSON

Europe’s latest geostationary weather satellite has captured its first image of Earth, and it’s a beauty! The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on the Meteosat Second Generation-3 (MSG-3) satellite was launched on July 5, 2012, and has since been in the commission stage. ESA says it will still be a couple of months before it is ready for operations.

SEVIRI provides enhanced weather coverage for Europe and Africa in order to improve very short range forecasts, in particular for rapidly developing thunder storms or fog. It scans Earth’s surface and atmosphere every 15 minutes in 12 different wavelengths, to track cloud development. SEVIRI can pick out features as small as a kilometer across in the visible bands, and three kilometers in the infrared.
MSG-3 is the third in a series of four satellites. In addition to its weather-watching mission and collection of climate records, MSG-3 has two secondary payloads.
The Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget sensor measures both the amount of solar energy that is reflected back into space and the infrared energy radiated by the Earth system, to better understand climate processes.
A Search & Rescue transponder will turn the satellite into a relay for distress signals from emergency beacons.


Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96673/a-brand-new-blue-marble-view-of-earth/

[valerief]

1. Wow, look at that pink sand! nt

[yourout]

2. K n Man thats a fricking awesome picture.

[Odin2005]

3. Europe is so green!

The Sahara is so ugly, a huge swath of desolation on an otherwise green land surface. Hard to believe that just 7,000 years ago it would be green and cloudy at this time of year.

[liberal N proud]

4. Nice!

[SirRevolutionary]

5. Deeply profound and beautiful

thanks for sharing n2doc.

[GiveMeFreedom]

6. Thanks

My new desk top image!!

[BlueJazz]

7. You can see a hurricane at 11 o'clock (Florance ??)

[JaneyVee]

8. Wow. Amazing!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. I wish these were in color

One of my long time bookmarks:

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/


Full disk

Current Visible
[img]
Current Infrared:
[img][/img]

[midnight]

10. I've book marked this link to explore-thanks

[Spitfire of ATJ]

12. Check back on this in the morning, the Visible one will show more.

[Politicub]

11. Beautiful! Thanks for posting the pic

[Scuba]

13. Hi Mom!

[progressoid]

14. That ain't Earth! Where's Amurika?!?

Cool pic!

[Kablooie]

15. Wow. Look at how sharply the Sahara is delineated. Never realized it was so clear cut.

[Posteritatis]

18. Keep in mind that delineation's about as thick as Italy's wide. (nt)

[morningfog]

16. Beautiful!

[mojowork_n]

17. Africa is HUGE. Much bigger than you see it on a lot of maps that

make Greenland look disproportionately large.

[tclambert]

19. Obviously fake. Where are the stars? Where's the giant turtle?

[Rhiannon12866]

20. K&R! Wonderful!