{"id":12555,"date":"2013-04-01T16:34:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T16:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=12555"},"modified":"2022-04-04T16:28:33","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T16:28:33","slug":"53rd-anniversary-of-the-first-image-from-a-meteorological-satellite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/12555","title":{"rendered":"53rd anniversary of the first image from a meteorological satellite"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2010\/04\/first_tiros1_image.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2010\/04\/first_tiros1_image.gif\" alt=\"TIROS-1 visible image\" width=\"640\" height=\"713\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">TIROS-1 visible image<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Today marks the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.noaanews.noaa.gov\/stories2010\/20100401_tiros.html\">53rd anniversary<\/a><\/strong> of the first image from the meteorological satellite <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/TIROS-1\">TIROS-1<\/a><\/strong>, which was available on <strong>01 April 1960<\/strong> <strong><em>(above)<\/em><\/strong>. While TIROS-1 was <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/holographica.blogspot.com\/2010\/03\/tiros-50th-anniversary.html\">only operational for 78 days<\/a><\/strong>, it provided a number of images of the Earth and cloud systems <em>(including the first image of a tropical cyclone, over the South Pacific Ocean on 10 April 1960)<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>One example that demonstrates how satellite imagery has improved over the past 53 years is a nighttime comparison of AWIPS images of Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 \u00b5m Day\/Night Band and 11.45 \u00b5m IR channel data <strong><em>(below),<\/em><\/strong> covering the same general region as shown on the first TIROS-1 image <em>(Maine, and the Canadian Maritime provinces)<\/em>. With ample illumination from the moon <em>(in the Waning Gibbous phase, at 67% of full),<\/em> the Day\/Night Band offered a &#8220;visible image at night&#8221; which showed such features as the extent of sea ice in the channels between Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, as well as a series of banded wave clouds associated with an undular bore off the southern coast of Nova Scotia. Subtle details regarding the location and cloud-top IR brightness temperature of overshooting tops could also be seen in the convective clouds off the coast of Maine.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 651px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/04\/130401_0620z_suomi_npp_viirs_dnb_ir_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/04\/130401_0620z_suomi_npp_viirs_dnb_ir_anim.gif\" alt=\"Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 \u00c2\u00b5m Day\/Night Band and 11.45 \u00c2\u00b5m IR channel images\" width=\"641\" height=\"407\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.7 \u00b5m Day\/Night Band and 11.45 \u00b5m IR channel images<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>UPDATE:<\/strong> <a title=\"TIROS-1 first image documentation\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ecmwf.int\/en\/about\/media-centre\/news\/2010\/first-tv-picture-space\"><strong>This information<\/strong><\/a> suggests that the TIROS-1 image shown at the top of this blog post was actually taken at 1608 UTC on 02 April 1960! Apparently the true &#8220;first image&#8221; from TIROS-1 was taken at 1331 UTC on 01 April 1960, shown below (courtesy of Rick Kohrs, SSEC). See<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/04\/the_real_first_TIROS-1_image.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2013\/04\/the_real_first_TIROS-1_image.png\" alt=\"The actual first TIROS-1 image (taken on 01 April 1960)\" width=\"640\" height=\"1013\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The actual first TIROS-1 image (taken at 1331 UTC on 01 April 1960)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today marks the 53rd anniversary of the first image from the meteorological satellite TIROS-1, which was available on 01 April 1960 (above). While TIROS-1 was only operational for 78 days, it provided a number of images of the Earth and cloud systems (including the first image of a tropical cyclone, over the South Pacific Ocean [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-suomi_npp","category-viirs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12555"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45574,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12555\/revisions\/45574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}