NASA’s recently launched NOAA-21 satellite, which experts hope will provide vital information about our planet’s oceans andAtmosphere and Earth, a global picture of the planet, capturing everything from the brilliant blue of the Caribbean Sea to the thick smog over northern India.
Planet Earth in vivid detail and color
According to the British newspaper ‘Daily Mail’, the image is just the beginning of a new scientific mission that will monitor the ocean environment and marine health, as well as the ability to track fires, droughts and floods.
The NOAA-21 Earth observation spacecraft has an instrument known as the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Array (VIIRS), which began collecting data in early December and produced a mosaic of frames over a 24-hour period .
Smog over India
All kinds of features, including the snow-capped Himalayas and Tibetan plateau, cut in smog over northern India from agricultural fires.
VIIRS measures sea surface temperature, which is an important metric to monitor Hurricane configurationwhile ocean color monitoring helps monitor phytoplankton activity, a key indicator of ocean ecology and marine health.
“The turquoise color visible around Cuba and the Bahamas in the image comes from sediments in the shallow waters around the continental shelf,” said Dr. Satya Kaluri, a program scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Caribbean blue color photo
“On land, VIIRS can detect and measure wildfires, droughts and floods, and its data can be used to track the thickness and smoke movement of wildfires,” Caloury added.
The instrument also provides analysis of the world’s snow and ice cover, clouds, fog, aerosols, dust and crop health, and collects images in the visible and infrared light spectrum, allowing scientists to see details of the Earth’s surface.
