Recent rocket launches as seen by NOAA‘s GOES ABI. More on the multi-spectral ‘rocket plume’ RGB: quick guide and CIMSS Satellite Blog post. Or this post on seeing the Landsat launch.

December 21, 2021 from Kennedy Space Center

#ICYMI: This morning at 5:07am ET, @SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft lifted off from Launch Complex 39A to begin its journey to deliver cargo & holiday treats to the @Space_Station.

Dragon will arrive tomorrow, Dec. 22 at ~4:30am ET. Coverage begins at 3am ET: https://t.co/KGdMz6kWsn pic.twitter.com/trSWURke2J

— NASA's Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) December 21, 2021

December 19, 2021 from Kennedy Space Center

Also from Cape Canaveral, but right on the edge of the meso-scale sector! (and as an animated gif).

#SpaceX is targeting Saturday, December 18 for launch of the #Turksat 5B mission to geostationary transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The 90-minute launch window opens at 10:58 p.m. EST, or 3:58 UTC on December 19 pic.twitter.com/OqlI6yvDy8

— SpaceX Tracker (@spacextracker) December 18, 2021

December 18, 2021 from Vandenberg Space Force Base

A view from GOES-17 (animated gif), note more striping due to increased instrument noise.

Did you see the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg SFB early this morning? Did you know that our geostationary satellites can "see" them too? Check it out, #GOES17 picked up on an intense heat signature from its liftoff at 442am PST/1242 UTC! ???? #CAwx #rocket #nerdtweet pic.twitter.com/GPdYkYSDZc

— NWS Los Angeles (@NWSLosAngeles) December 18, 2021

H/T

NOAA GOES-16 and -17 ABI data are via the University of Wisconsin-Madison SSEC Satellite Data Services. These images were made using the geo2grid software, developed at the UW/SSEC. More GOES-16 and -17 imagery and other information, including the SIFT software developed at UW/SSEC to quickly test RGB changes.

View only this post Read Less

By animating daily NOAA GOES-16 ABI Full Disk true color imagery, how the Earth is illuminated over time can be seen. For example, the minimum in incoming solar radiation in the Northern Hemisphere associated with the Winter Solstice. For details, see “What is a Solstice?” by SciJinks. Or this NOAA https://www.noaa.gov/education/news/share-your-solstice-sunset-with-noaa-education post.

11 UTC loops of 2021 (so far): durations of 9 and 18 seconds. Also as an animated gif. These posted GOES-16 Full Disk imagery are only showing a small number of the pixels, for a fuller resolution image at one time (20-June-2021).

Interactive web page

An interactive web page with almost a years worth of GOES ABI Full Disk visible images at 11 UTC. The beginning date is the (northern hemisphere) summer solstice in 2021 and the end date is the winter solstice in 2021. A user can play the animation, as well as annotate the images. For example, draw lines along the terminator for different times of the year. One example might be to compare a solstice to an equinox. Can you estimate the day of the summery equinox? H/T Tom Whittaker, SSEC, for the webapp. Note that the app allows one to save an mp4 animation.

H/T

These images were made using NOAA data with geo2grid, from UW-Madison, SSEC.

View only this post Read Less

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha?apai volcano in Tonga violently erupted around 2030 UTC on 19 December 2021 — and a radiometrically-retrieved Ash Height product from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (using JMA Himawari-8 data) indicated that ash was ejected as high as 16-18 km (above).

Ash Loading was very high within the volcanic cloud, with particles having a large Ash Effective Radius (below).

 

In GOES-17 (GOES-East) Ash RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below), brighter shades of yellow indicated that significant concentrations of SO2 were present within the volcanic cloud — while shades of red supported the presence of ash.

GOES-17 Day Cloud Phase Distinction RGB images (below) clearly showed the expansion of the glaciated volcanic cloud (brighter shades of orange).

GOES-17 “Clean” Infrared Window (10.35 µm) images (below) indicated that the coldest cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures were in the -80 to -89C range (shades of violet).

Here's another cool view of the Tonga volcanic eruption

This is how two different satellites saw it, at exactly the same time. Nice pseudo-3d effect! https://t.co/iswrCaJMpX pic.twitter.com/M8xInwyXl6

— Simon Proud (@simon_sat) December 20, 2021

View only this post Read Less

For the second time during its life cycle, Typhoon Rai reached Category 5 intensity (ADT | SATCON) east of Vietnam during the 18-19 December 2021 period. JMA Himawari-8 Infrared Window (10.3 µm) images (above) showed cloud-top infrared brightness temperatures of -90C and colder at times around the eye.

 VIIRS Infrared Window (11.45 µm) images from NOAA-20 and Suomi-NPP as viewed using RealEarth (below) provided a more detailed view of Rai around the time that it reached Category 5 intensity.

3 days earlier, Rai first reached reached Category 5 intensity at 0000 UTC on 16 December, shortly before making landfall in the Philippines; 2.5-minute Himawari-8 Infrared images (below) revealed a small-diameter “pinhole” eye. As Rai moved across the Philippines, it was responsible for hundreds of fatalities in addition to widespread flooding and power outages.

View only this post Read Less