Earth Day 2026
April 22, 2026: Happy Earth Day! The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. The idea was conceived by then Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and an estimated 20 million Americans participated on that first day, which was approximately 10% of the US population back then. You can read more about the first Earth Day celebration on the Nelson Institute’s web page: Tracing Earth Day’s Origins.
To celebrate we are going to show off some full-disk GOES imagery. Here’s a selfie of almost everyone in North and South America today at 17:00 UTC (roughly local noon to the satellite) from GOES-19 (GOES-East) ABI:
If you weren’t in the GOES-East image maybe you can find yourself in the GOES-West (GOES-18) full disk image at local satellite noon (21:00 UTC)…
Here is an animation of GOES-19 (GOES-East) from satellite sunrise (11:00 UTC) to satellite sunset (23:00 UTC). GOES-East sits over the equator at 75W, so in the same timezone as the United States east coast.
Here is a similar animation of GOES-18 (GOES-West) from satellite sunrise (15:00 UTC) to satellite sunset (03:00 UTC the next day). GOES-West sits over the equator at 137W, which would put it roughly in Alaska’s timezone (noon for that location on this day was 21:06 UTC and that is -9 hours from UTC noon and that’s Alaska Standard Time), though 137W is somewhat east of the Alaska/Canada border.
Where were you at noon on Earth Day 2026? Unless you were off planet or in the Arctic or Antarctic Circle, you must be somewhere in this next image. A true color, local-noon composite from five geostationary imagers, thanks to the SSEC Satellite Data Services (SDS), including two from the USA, one from Japan, and two from Europe:
