The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a sensor developed by Raytheon that rides on NASA’s earth observing satellites Terra and Aqua. Terra is now 10 years old (launched 1999) far exceeding its expected design life of 5 years. Aqua was launched in 2002.
The Earth Observing System (EOS) acquires images of all natural (or not) phenomena on planet Earth (e.g. fires, volcano eruptions, sand storms, smoke, pollution, etc.) NASA makes images from the satellites available to the public within hours after collection. As they say ‘it is almost real time imagery.’ For example, here is one of the images collected today (4/28/10) around 9:30 UTC. Seems rainy in Crete!
Some of the images are handpicked and posted with explanation in a gallery maintained by NASA. The image of the day in that gallery is an image of the oil leak from the site where an oil platform sank in the Gulf of Mexico. The latest estimate is that 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking from the site per day (up from 1,000 barrels per day.)
The incident happened close to the south-most part of the oil slick which travels towards Mississippi Delta.
Another cool set of images were collected a few days ago and they show the Eyjafjallajokull Volcano in Iceland. In the one shown below Iceland is covered by ashes and steam. The volcano is located in the southern part of the island, close to the coast.
And of course, here is an image of the ash plume over Europe taken on 4/16/10 at 10:45 UTC. The eruption started on 4/14/10 so this image shows the airspace over Northern Europe while almost all commercial flights were cancelled.
England, most of Germany, most of Holland, and Poland are clearly covered by the ashes from the volcano.
No comments:
Post a Comment