Congratulations – you're looking better than ever this morning!

The United States' newest Earth-watcher, GOES-16, has sent back its first high-resolution images, and it's making the Earth observation community get a bit misty around the eyes. As you can see from the image above (or here for m.reg readers), the 16 spectral channels (two visible, four near-infrared, 10 infrared) on the …

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Interesting stuff

Might this new technology be able to spot a load of surplus hot air around the Washington DC area?

On a more serious note: great work by the engineers. The high speed and resolution open up interesting possibilities to do high-spatial resolution time series analysis at decent temporal resolution.

[Rich 11]

Well, that's done it

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric administration – unlike America's Environmental Protection Agency or Department of Agriculture, still allowed to disseminate information to the public, for now

...

to help pinpoint severe weather events in America

...

to monitor and predict the evolution of these systems

The mention of both climate and evolution ensures that Mike Pence will want any and all photos from this Satanic satellite destroyed before they can corrupt the God-fearing souls of the great American public.

[John Robson]

Re: Well, that's done it

Yep - Star Wars test coming in .....

Glad they at least got the bird in the sky, sorry hovering near the dome, before the fart took office.

[Anonymous Coward]

Render times are getting better

Think how long something like this would have taken just a few years back ;-)

[Voland's right hand]

Re: Render times are getting better

Actually, bandwidth to the satellite is getting better. The primary limitation was and still is the time to download the images.

[Chemical Bob]

Re: Render times are getting better

Nope, Sanity Claus has always managed just fine with eight tiny renders...

Mine's the one with 'The Night Before Christmas' in the pocket

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

Earth seems very cloudy. Hope that doesn't affect the global climate.

[Richard Scratcher]

Full disc? Not quite!

I notice that the lower part of the image has been carefully cropped in order to hide the alien base in Antarctica.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the backup HQ for climate agencies

Nononono. That's not the alien base any more; it's now NOAA's emergency backup HQ, to be shared with refugee staff from EPA, NASA, and the National Park Service as soon as they can make good their escape from the Trumpenfuhrer. The alien base has been relocated to the Mall in Washington.

Anon because, well, you fill it in.

[Gio Ciampa]

Re: That's the backup HQ for climate agencies

"The alien base has been relocated to the Mall in Washington."

That would explain the lack of attendees at the inauguration - the builders needed to clear the land...

[monty75]

"I can see the pub from here!"

[Little Mouse]

That photo is so detailed I can actually see myself looking at it.

[John Smith 19]

" geostationary satellite's key missions "

Giving a full Earth image every 15 minutes.

From 1 fixed location in the sky no less.

Some contradiction here?

[Unep Eurobats]

Re: " geostationary satellite's key missions "

What, you believe all that post-truth 'spherical earth' nonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: " geostationary satellite's key missions "

Well put it this way. If the Earth isn't spherical that bloke that came up with the Time Cube concept is going to look a right buffoon.

Google it.

[Lars]

Re: " geostationary satellite's key missions "

Looks very flat to me.

[Jos V]

Re: " geostationary satellite's key missions "

The earth is not flat. It's round, just like a pancake.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: " geostationary satellite's key missions "

The earth is not flat. It's round, just like a pancake.

And if you look very, very carefully, you can see the tusks of the elephants and, underneath then, the flippers of the Turtle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: " geostationary satellite's key missions "

Given the Earth is effectively all rounded corners flat earthers can be either correct or entirely wrong it all depends on whether you think gravity is holding earth correctly.

The only way I can see flat earth theory being debunked if we build a massive pool cue and a chalk the size of the moon and attempt to add spin to the earth.

I think all theories are possible, it just depends in which dimension you currently reside.

In my dimension...5...we mock people that think the earth is spherical as it was conclusively proven that the earth is a zorgflaargh when a certain chap went round, through, parallel to, adjacent to and none of the above (simplified for three dimensional perception) in his vehicle that was able to move and remain stationary throughout the journey he simultaneously undertook and didn't bother with but also half arsed his way through.

Then again what do I know, I come from a dimension where the 5th axis is inclination where we can measure things based on whether its worth bothering using a tape mehsure calibrated into units of meh-gaherz.

[cray74]

Re: " geostationary satellite's key missions "

Giving a full Earth image every 15 minutes. From 1 fixed location in the sky no less. Some contradiction here?

No, some semantics here. From the context of a geostationary satellite, "full Earth" is not likely to refer to "a picture of the entire terrestrial globe," but would probably be used in the same sense of a full moon: a full Earth is the terrestrial phase that occurs when one hemisphere Earth is completely illuminated as seen from GOES-16.

A blue marble rather than a flat Earth fish-eye view. ;)

[Fizzle]

Great CGI backdrop

I see the last photo with the caption:

"GOES-16 image of Earth and Moon. Image: NASA/NOAA"

doesn't show any stars (rather like the photos from the moon etc).

So it's quite clear that this was all filmed in a studio with some sort of CGI backdrop.

Another case of "alternative facts" for us poor humans to digest.

Sigh...

[cray74]

Re: Great CGI backdrop

doesn't show any stars (rather like the photos from the moon etc).

So it's quite clear that this was all filmed in a studio with some sort of CGI backdrop.

On the off chance you're being serious, I'll be pedantic: a camera able to focus on a bright object like the Earth is not going to capture dim objects like stars. A classic example of how even bright backgrounds can be turned black by bright lighting is found here. Camera apertures, like pupils, are limited.

[Baldrickk]

Re: Great CGI backdrop

Shouldn't need to be pedanic, it's pretty obvious the comment was satire.

Seems that it wasn't obvious enough by the downvotes currently exceeding the upvotes by a factor of 3:1 (until my vote balanced it out a bit.

[Fizzle]

Re: Great CGI backdrop

I specialise in HDRI photography so am well aware of the light versus stars problem.

Just sayin'

:)

[Clive Galway]

"much-embiggened" version

"and you can see a much-embiggened version here."

985x975? Hardly.

[Little Mouse]

Those so-called spectral images are rubbish. I can't see any ghosts in them at all.

[Ilsa Loving]

I hope they're archiving everything somewhere...

Cause at the rate Trump is going, I'm expecting them to be ordered to delete their data by the end of next month.

[Drew 11]

Allowing Mike "Himmler" Pence to blame gay marriage for tornados 5 times as quickly.