One of the best surprises of my life was turning on my brand-new iPhone—before it had even been activated—glancing down at the screen, and seeing an image I had made. Apple chose the NASA Blue Marble for the default welcome screen and wallpaper, and I had no idea beforehand.
Here's how I did it.
A wide field meteor camera at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center recorded this spectacular meteor breaking up in Earth’s atmosphere on Sept. 30, 2011, 8:37 p.m. EDT. Also visible is a star-like object moving slowly toward the upper middle of the field of view — the upper stage of the Zenit booster that launched the …
By Lora Koenig Hello! My name is Lora Koenig and I would like to welcome you to our Satellite Era Accumulation Traverse blog. I know that is a mouthful so we will call it the SEAT blog. So have a SEAT, grab a hot drink, and enjoy the blog. From now until mid-January, my colleagues […]
During every minute of the day, every day, a volcano is erupting somewhere on Earth. Actually, it’s more like a dozen. Or two. Satellites capture much of this activity, and we try to highlight as many eruptions as possible, but for one reason or another (like clouds) some of them fall through the cracks. Here […]
Vishnu, an Earth Observatory reader, posed a great question after viewing “The Six-Million Mile View of Earth and Moon“: “I’ve never seen a photo like that. Was the background beyond Earth ‘photoshopped’ to remove background stars, or is that angle so narrow and the background space so coincidentally ’empty’ that no visible stars are there […]
Floods Devastate Pakistan For the second straight year, torrential monsoon-driven rains have swamped portions of Pakistan. The AFP reports that more than 200 people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes. Researchers associated with the MODIS instrument on the Terra satellite recently posted an eye-opening set of images that shows the condition of the swollen Indus […]
Goddard Space Flight Center 12:30 p.m. Charles Gatebe: I’m calling in from my office at Goddard Space Flight Center today. We finished our flights for CAR yesterday, on Monday. I did try to call in my report late in yesterday evening as I was driving home from Wallops. I missed the connection at that time […]
Once upon a time Landsat images were expensive (Landsat 7 data was $600 per scene, and the earlier satellites were even pricier) and difficult to find. Now the data—which dates to 1972—is free, and reasonably easy (or at least not painfully difficult) to browse and download from the Global Visualization Viewer, or even the Google […]
Maryland 8:00 p.m. Rafael Rincon: I am calling from the Bay Bridge in Maryland, on my way to Goddard after a long day at Wallops. I’m almost there, after the final flight for the DBSAR on this campaign. It’s been a very long, but a very good day. The DBSAR worked beautifully, with no hiccups […]
