Jakarta –
For those living in the Northern Hemisphere, the chirping of birds and the recent blooming of flowers are good signs that spring has arrived. A new video released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows a stunning picture of seasonal changes occurring on Earth.
A high-speed video stitches together footage of our planet’s surface taken every day over the past year. These images were taken using NOAA’s GOES-East satellite, which orbits more than 35 thousand km above the Earth’s equator.
Because the GOES-East satellite orbits at the same speed as Earth’s rotation, it continuously observes the same region, including much of the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean.
From its vantage point in space, the satellite tracks the edge that separates day and night on Earth. In the video, you can see how the twilight zone, called the terminator, continues to shift throughout the year. That’s because our planet is tilted 23.5 degrees on its axis, which impacts the length of day and night.
March 19 marked the official start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the earliest spring has arrived in the US in 128 years. On this day, the Sun shines directly above the equator, because the Earth is at a point in its orbit that is neither tilted towards or away from the Sun.
Instead, it is located perpendicular to the Sun, which is why we experience almost the same hours of day and night. Thus, the terminator at this point is straight, and can be thought of as ‘splitting’ our planet into two roughly equal halves.
You can see an example of this in the animated video, consisting of an image clicked at 07:50 ET (1150 GMT) every day. In the days after the spring equinox, our planet slowly begins to shift towards the Sun, which makes the days longer and warmer as the Southern Hemisphere approaches winter.
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2024-03-30 15:00:38
#Satellite #Images #Show #Amazing #Picture #Seasonal #Earth
