Foto Friday – Israel from on high

July 26, 2009 - 10:23 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Technology 

Every minute of every day, eyes in the sky are watching and recording earth. The resulting images — only a fraction of which are on view to the public — are often incomprehensible and dull to the untrained eye, but sometimes you come across some that are fascinating. For example, this image from the NASA Visible Earth catalogue of a Saharan dust storm covering our region:
Saharan_dust_storm_2003094.1050.1km

Or the beaches of Tel Aviv, as seen from the International Space Station:
ISS017-E-5423_TA_beaches

It’s s bit shocking to realize the level of detail that satellite photography can achieve. For example, let’s check out the weather, shall we?, courtesy of EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.

Europe-Africa Middle East
Thermal IR (showing clouds)
Europe-Africa Middle East
Visible wavelength
Europe-Africa Middle East

More weather information can be found at Israel Weather and more satellite images of Israel can be found at the wonderful Israel Science and Technology Homepage, a great resource.

Israel, as the ninth nation in the world to launch a satellite into orbit (the Ofeq 1 in 1988), has its own storied history of space surveillance — and while many of those stories will remain untold for a long, long time, at least one commercial venture has emerged: SpaceCom, whose Amos satellites provide communications services to a range of TV and radio broadcasters around the world.
KAZAKHSTAN-BAIKONUR-SOYUZ-FREGAT-AMOS-2

The Amos 3 went into orbit last year, and launches are planned for 2010, 2011 and 2012. This image, of the Amos 2 satellite launch in 2003, is testament to the vision and tenacity of its founders — principally Meir Amit, a military hero and former head of Mossad who passed away at the age of 88 and was buried last week. A tribute to Amit can be found here.

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