Satelite Images Of Australia

[Bandito]

One of my passions is remote sensing. Most days I goto https://acres.ga.gov.au/modis_data and see yesterdays moderate resolution satelite images. They have a resolution of one pixel per 1 square kilometer. They arent normal photos, but rather a chemical analysis of the light being reflected of the earths surface - at 32 different wavelenths if you dont mind - thats right 32 different colors, most are in the infrared and far infrared spectrum, and are specific to the wavelengths of light absorbed by chloraohil in vegitation and ocean agle, ozone in the ozone layer, temperature of clouds, temperature of oceans etc.

The normal satelite photos used on the weather part of the news is very misleading in my opinion, as anything less than heavy cloud is filtered out. Most of the time I am interested in cloud cover of any sort so I can try to predict what is coming.

With the climate change suff going on, it is also interesting to see the cloud formations - of particular interst of late is the wierd circular cyclone like patterns off the coast of perth. I can usually spot cyclones in the north of the country several days before they are reported on the weather.

Here is a low res 5km per pixel version of yesterday - it takes a day for the super computers and technicians to process the data - have been thinking of setting up an X band satelite dish to recieve the data directly so I can process it much faster - one day mabee.

Anyone else know of similar sites?

 

[Duff]

Not weather related, but Nearmap is doing well in close up satellite images of Australia at present. Cool feature is the timeline across the top.

 

[Bandito]

Thanks Duff! Looks like google earth may have some competition in that one. Here is a side by side comparison of google earth on the left and nearmap on the right - this is just a canberra airport runway, but it is a more recient image and much higher quality. The whole of canberra seems to be like this.

 

[FNQ Bunyip]

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

I've been watching the flood waters move out of QLD and down the Paroo and Darling system with the shots from here ... can realy see the change in the desert country from befor the rain ...

 

[Pollux]

Bandito, it appears to only be better in the city areas....

I just had a look at the parents farm..

Nearmap on the left, google maps on the right.

 

[FNQ Bunyip]

found the same up here Polly ,, not updated since 04, and not as clear as google..

 

[Duff]

Nearmap have only started with capital cites at this stage. But each time I log onto it, the amount of imagery is growing.

 

[Bribie G]

Top work Duff

Here's Nearmap and Google Earth views of our place, the Google one would have to be 2 years out of date. The NM one shows my faithful Mazda and Daihatsu and from the lawns I'd say it's around 5 months old before we got some rain.