The Suomi NPP VIIRS Day Night Band during a Full (or near-Full) Moon yields striking visible imagery at night because of abundant reflected lunar illumination. Sequential orbits along the west coast of the Pacific on the morning of 10 October showed the penetration of coastal stratus and fog inland at... Read More
NOAA/NESDIS placed GOES-15 in Rapid Scan Operations (RSO) mode for several hours on 7 October 2014 (link) to test RSO capabilities over different sectors of the Pacific Ocean. RSO Capabilities over the Pacific were possible in the 1990s; the testing yesterday showed they could be done again. Three sectors were scanned. The Sitka... Read More
The Japanese Satellite Himawari-8 was successfully launched from southern Tanegashima Island today at 05:16 UTC. (NASA News Source). Is the plume from that launch visible in MTSAT imagery? The visible imagery with a nominal time of 0514 UTC was actually scanning Tanegashima Island at 0519 UTC, and a plume, denoted by the yellow arrow above,... Read More
The Suomi NPP VIIRS image toggle, above, from the pre-dawn hours (3:42 am local time) on 6 October 2014 shows a 0.7 µm Day/Night Band image and an 11.45 µm Infrared image, along with observations of postive and negative lightning strikes. With ample illumination by moonlight, the “visible image at night” Day/Night Band image highlighted areas of convective overshooting tops, but also included... Read More
