Aqua MODIS True Color Progression during Hurricane Katrina

  • Released Monday, April 17, 2006
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The Aqua satellite orbits the Earth every 99 minutes in a polar, sun-synchronous orbit. The MODIS instrument on Aqua observes reflected light from the Earth in 36 spectral frequencies. These observations can be processed to show many properties of the Earth's surface, from temperature and phytoplankton measurements near the surface of the ocean to fire occurrences and land cover characteristics on the land surface.
This animation shows about 4 days of MODIS data from individual Aqua orbits processed to look like true-color photographs of the planet's surface. For this animation the data is accumulated and so builds up a complete picture of the surface of the Earth except around the South Pole, which is in darkness during this entire 4-day period.

Four days of accumulating Aqua MODIS true-color swaths during the period of Hurricane Katrina, from August 27, 2005 through August 30, 2005.

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Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Monday, April 17, 2006.
This page was last updated on Sunday, August 4, 2024 at 10:00 PM EDT.

Datasets used

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