Earth Shines in Dramatic New Pictures From Space
The first high-resolution images from an advanced weather satellite show our dynamic planet in vivid detail.
Get ready to see our home planet in a whole new light, thanks to stunning photos of Earth taken by a next-generation weather satellite.
The GOES-16 satellite is the latest in a series of Earth-monitoring probes operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Launched in November, the satellite is currently observing our world from about 22,300 miles above the surface.
On Monday, the probe sent back the first series of images from its Advanced Baseline Imager instrument, which shows Earth and our atmosphere in extraordinarily vivid detail. (Also see 15 amazing photos from astronaut Scott Kelly's year in space.)
“The GOES-16 is even better than we imagined,” says Steve Goodman, the satellite’s program officer at NOAA.
The satellite’s imager
