Figure 1 – First full disk image from the NASA NOAA Goes-16 geosynchronous satellite. Credit NASA and NOAA.

NASA and NOAA have released the first images from the NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite and these are glorious. GOES-16 is the first satellite in NOAA’s fleet of next-generation of geostationary satellites taken from 22,300 miles above the Earth’s surface. Its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument can capture composite color full-disk visible image of the Western Hemisphere. An example is shown in Figure 1. It can provide such an image every fifteen minutes and it can zoom in on hurricanes or other trouble spots. This is an amazing weather satellite. But for now we can just look at Figure 1 in amazement.

“I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.”

George David Weiss and Robert Thiele and, of course Mr. Louis Armstrong