NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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NASA and NOAA's newest weather satellite, GOES-14, has captured some fascinating views of Hurricane Bill. This is a collection of a few quick movies put together by the GOES-14 team. Credit: NASAGOES Project NASA Releases GOES-14 Satellite Video of Hurricane Bill

NASA has released a video of Hurricane Bill today from the GOES-14 satellite. The video was put together from a series of still frames taken by the satellite using both infrared and visible imagery and provides different views of Hurricane Bill on August 20.

Earlier this summer, NASA launched the latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O. Recently operations have been turned over to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the satellite was renamed GOES-14. The satellite is still being tested in orbit, and it captured video of Hurricane Bill on August 20, while it was on its way to Bermuda.

The spectacular video is a collection of a few quick movies put together by the GOES-14 team from the NASA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The video includes an impressive zoom-out, showing how big the hurricane is, relative to the hemisphere. Bill is a large hurricane, more than 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) across, and the storm’s partially cloud-filled eye is nearly 50 kilometers (31 miles) wide.

On August 20, the date of the movie, Hurricane Bill had sustained winds of 135 mph, making it a powerful Category 4 storm. At that time hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 80 miles from the center. On August 21, Bill's sustained winds were near 110 mph and hurricane force winds extended up to 115 miles.

For daily updates and new NASA satellite images on Hurricane Bill, visit NASA's Hurricane Web Page at www.nasa.gov/hurricane. For forecasts and advisories on Hurricane Bill, visit NOAA's National Hurricane Center page: > National Hurricane Center.

Text credit: Rob Gutro/Goddard Space Flight Center

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First IR Image from Newest Weather Satellite Captures Hurricane Bill

GOES-14 first full-disk thermal infrared (IR) image. Credit: NASA GOES Project, Dennis Chesters
Remote-sensing scientists call a satellite image that captures an entire hemisphere of the Earth in one view a "full-disk" image. The delivery of the first full-disk image from a newly launched weather satellite is an exciting milestone in the mission. It provides scientists and engineers with incontrovertible evidence that a new satellite—as well as the communications systems needed to deliver the images back to Earth—is ready to do its job.

On August 17, 2009, at 1:31 p.m. EST, the latest NASA/NOAA geostationary weather satellite, called GOES-14, returned its first full-disk thermal infrared (IR) image, showing radiation with a wavelength of 10.7 micrometers emanating from Earth. Infrared images are useful because they provide information about temperatures. A wavelength of 10.7 micrometers is 15 times longer than the longest wavelength of light (red) that people can see, but scientists can turn the data into a picture by having a computer display cold temperatures as bright white and hot temperatures as black. The hottest (blackest) features in the scene are land surfaces; the coldest (whitest) features in the scene are clouds.

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GOES-O Releases First Solar Image

GOES-O first solar image. Credit: NOAA/NASA
GOES- 14, formerly GOES-O, has achieved another significant milestone with the release of the first formal Solar Image from the Solar X-Ray Imager (SXI). The engineering and operations team has finished its initial instrument calibration and alignments and produced the image of the sun on August 13, 2009 at approximately 10:05 EDT. The SXI instrument is built by Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, California. The instrument and the spacecraft continue to operate normally as NASA continues the post launch testing.

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GOES-O Renamed GOES-14

On June 27, 2009, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O, soared into space during a spectacular launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. GOES-O has now been renamed and its solar array has been deployed.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) GOES-O satellite is the second in the GOES N Series that will improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events around the world.

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Mission Overview
GOES-O is the latest weather satellite developed by NASA to aid the nation's meteorologists and climate scientists. The acronym stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. The spacecraft in the series provide the familiar weather pictures seen on United States television newscasts every day. The satellites are equipped with a formidable array of sensors and instruments.

GOES provides nearly continuous imaging and sounding, which allows forecasters to better measure changes in atmospheric temperature and moisture distributions, hence increasing the accuracy of their forecasts. GOES environmental information is used for a host of applications, including weather monitoring and prediction models.

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