Tag Archives: satellite

Snow in the Atacama Desert

A con­vin­cing argument can be made that the Atacama Desert in Chile and Argen­tina is the driest place on Earth. The average rainfall is one mil­li­metre per year and some weather mon­it­oring stations have never detected rain. This week eighty … Continue reading

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Snow-covered UK seen from space

In January I posted an image from NASA’s MODIS satel­lite showing the UK covered in snow. I’m doing the same for the recent snow; these images were taken today (1st December) between 1110 and 1430. The problem with this image is … Continue reading

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Rods from God

The problem with bombs is getting them to their target. Dropping them from the air has always been the standard approach (Aus­trians used air-dropped bombs during the siege of Vienna in 1849), but this is beset by problems. Even stealth … Continue reading

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Satellite view of snow-covered UK from space

This is what the UK looks like at the moment, covered in snow. Clicking on the image will load a high res­ol­u­tion (250m per pixel) version (3400×4400 px, 3.02MB). The imagery comes from NASA’s Moderate Res­ol­u­tion Imaging Spec­trora­diometer (MODIS) satellite’s Rapid … Continue reading

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Long Duration Experiment

NASA’s Long Duration Exposure Facility was a bus-sized satel­lite that orbited Earth for more than five and a half years, com­pleting more than 32 000 complete orbits. It was covered in 86 panels, each of which was a dif­ferent exper­i­ment designed … Continue reading

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Space Junk

The space around Earth is full of junk, as you can see in the pictures below from the European Space Agency. Click to enlarge. It’s so full of junk that recently a US Iridium satel­lite and a Russian Strela satel­lite collided, … Continue reading

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