Russian Satellite Takes Most Detailed 121-Megapixel Image of Earth Yet

Diggester writes "The satellite, known as Elektro-L No.1, took an image from its stationary point over 35,000 kilometers above the Indian Ocean. This is the most detailed image of the Earth yet available, capturing the Earth in a single shot with 121-megapixels. NASA satellites use a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together. The detail in the pic is just amazing."

Re:Upside down?

[INT_QRK]

Well, you'd be right if North was actually up. However, it's settled science that West is actually up given that the sun and planets rotate top to bottom down the solar system's vertical plane.

Re:Wait, what?

[Beardo the Bearded]

The Russian method, as linked in the article, is one large picture. It's actually a composite of different wavelengths, which is really cool. The rust effect is from the IR reflection of vegetation.

When NASA does it, as in the pictures that aren't this one, they stitch together a composite.

Re:Looks terrible

[Hadlock]

WHAT

chromatic abberation in MY 1.21 gigapixel space photo?

this was NOT the future I was promised

send it back

Re:why do Russian and US colors vary so much?

[arth1]

I really dislike the 2012 Blue Marble, due to the very visible stripes where it's been quilted. It may have far more pixels, but I think the original 1972 Apollo 17 image is far more visually impressive.

But to me, nothing so far beats this 43 year old photo [wikipedia.org].
That's my home, there!

Re:Wait, what?

[nbauman]

Thank you for Sputnik and Vostok.

You put the U.S. into such a panic about falling behind in science and technology that they funded my science education.

I couldn't have done it today. No more free tax-funded education. We have to go out and buy our education the free market. No more free tuition at City College. You have to be rich to study engineering in America now.

Re:121 Mpixels vs photographic film

[mk1004]

The cameras used in the Apollo program included a 70mm Hasselblad. IIRC, years ago as digital cameras struggled to pass the 2 to 3 megapixel range, it was said that to be equivalent to 35mm, you'd need 15-18 megapixel. That was, I believe, to match the grain densities of 64 or 100 speed film. So scale that up about 4x to go from 35mm to 70mm. I'd say those Hasselblads did just fine.

NOAA satellites image Earth at the same resolution

[GOES_user]

Our current series of geostationary weather satellites operated by NOAA have been taking images at 1 km resolution for the visible band and 4 km for four IR bands since 1995. The primary difference with Elektro is that it has more bands, two visible bands at 1 km and 8 IR bands at 4 km (which is why it looks blocky when you zoom in). A description of that imager can be found here: http://database.eohandbook.com/database/instrumentsummary.aspx?instrumentID=784 [eohandbook.com] The image referenced in the article is a false color composite, which has been a common product from weather satellites (geostationary and otherwise) since we started using them decades ago. It shows vegetation more than we have seen from GOES because it has a near-IR band. GOES typically takes "full disk" images every three hours. The US has a new platform going up in 2016 with 16 bands - visible bands are 0.5 km and IR are at 1 km. That sensor will not be able to do true color (some of us fought hard for that...) but it can be simulated to an extent (the sensor will have red and blue wavelength sensing abilities, with a near-IR band allowing use of a look-up table to generate green; the surface under thin clouds, around coastal areas, and some other cases don't look quite right). Japan has bought the same sensor from the same vendor but swapped out a band and replaced it with green, so they will have true color images at roughly 22,000x22,000 pixels in the 2014-2015 time frame. This new sensor can take "full disk" images every 15 minutes (that is the scan schedule set for the US, it could go faster than that). The US took true color images from a geostationary camera on ATS-3 in the late 1960s. As far as I know no one has taken true color images from the geostationary orbit since. I haven't looked closely at Elektro data but the loop I've seen indicates light leaking into the telescope as the sun starts to light the Earth in the east (ie sunrise) - it looks like a lens flare. Many weather satellites have issues like this to some extent, but in this case it was more pronounced than I've usually seen it.