{"id":62647,"date":"2025-01-20T23:24:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-20T23:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=62647"},"modified":"2025-01-21T01:30:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T01:30:47","slug":"true-color-imagery-at-different-scales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/62647","title":{"rendered":"True Color Imagery at different scales"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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GOES-16 True Color imagery, 1836 UTC on 17 January 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While Wisconsin endures a very cold airmass without the brightening benefit of snow, various satellites continue to take spectacular imagery.\u00a0 The GOES-16 True Color imagery above, from the CSPP Geosphere site<\/a>, shows a clear scene and snowless features over southern Wisconsin (except over Racine and Kenosha counties in far southeast WI where lake-effect snow fell earlier this month).\u00a0 The resolution of the GOES-16 Visible channel (Band 2, 0.64 \u00b5m) is 0.5 km at the sub-satellite point, meaning an effective resolution of around 1 km over Wisconsin.\u00a0 NOAA-20 overflew Wisconsin on 19 January and the scene below, from the VIIRS Today website<\/a>, shows a similar view, but with nominally better resolution:\u00a0 the visible channels (M03, M04, M05) used to create true-color imagery have 750-m resolution.\u00a0 The ‘true color’ views do not look the same because of the different wavelengths that are used to create them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NOAA-20 True-Color imagery over southern Wisconsin, 19 January 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even better resolution imagery occurred when Sentinel-2A overflew Wisconsin on 17 January 2025 (link<\/a>; to reproduce the imagery below, change the date at the website that opens; this site also allows a user to view southern California and the effects of recent fires).\u00a0 The MSI (Multi-Spectral Imager<\/a>) on Sentinel-2A has 10-m<\/span><\/em><\/strong> resolution at 0.49, 0.56 and 0.67 micrometers), so it can produce pictures with far higher resolution, but its temporal coverage is restricted.\u00a0 Madison was lucky on the 17th: full coverage on a clear day. It really is that brown in Wisconsin without snowcover! Your blogger also finds the ice patterns on the lakes fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sentinel-2A True Color Imagery over Madison WI, 17 January 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A zoomed-in view over Madison’s isthmus, below, includes the UW-Madison campus and the State Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sentinel-2A True Color Imagery over Madison WI, 17 January 2025; Lake Monona is in the bottom right, Mendota is at the top of the image, and Lake Wingra is bottom center (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Wisconsin endures a very cold airmass without the brightening benefit of snow, various satellites continue to take spectacular imagery.\u00a0 The GOES-16 True Color imagery above, from the CSPP Geosphere site, shows a clear scene and snowless features over southern Wisconsin (except over Racine and Kenosha counties in far southeast WI where lake-effect snow fell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":62648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,78,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-goes-16","category-noaa-20","category-other-satellites"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62647","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\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62647"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62659,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62647\/revisions\/62659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}