16 December, 2005

is it REALLY visible from space?

Is the palm island really visible from space?
Be your own judge (Image courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC)


(photos from NASA website, click the thumbnail for a larger version, beware its over 3000 pixels wide iirc)


in my opinion, not without a good pair of binoculars.

This is a pretty interesting project by the way, i suggest everyone to take a look at it to see what the climate could be like in the UAE in a few years time:
Recent reports and various satellite data show that the Arabian Gulf region is one of the largest confluences of aerosol types in the world. Emissions, smoke transported from the Indian subcontinent, and natural dust episodes result in a unique aerosol laboratory. To further complicate the intricate consortium of aerosols in this region, the Arabian Gulf also has an exceedingly complex meteorology which include variable sea surface temperatures, enormous latent heat fluxes, strong land sea gradients, and strong mesoscale circulations. These factors combined make the Arabian Gulf a challenge to our models and satellite sensors to carry out environmental monitoring. NASA, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Department of Water Resources Studies, and 20 other US and foreign research laboratories have embarked on a measurement campaign, Unified Aerosol Experiment * United Arab Emirates, (UAE2), to gain insight on the properties and concentrations of aerosols in the gulf region and understand how these aerosols might affect climate change. To accomplish this task, 15 Aerosol Robotic Network Sun Photometers (AERONET), the NRL Mobile Atmospheric Aerosol And Radiation Characterization (MAARCO), and the GSFC Surface-sensing Measurements for Atmospheric Radiative Transfer (SMART) will be deployed and utilized in the gulf, coast, and desert region of the UAE.

to look at some regularly updated high-res satellite photos of the UAE, head over here

4 comments:

B.D. said...

Incredible photos. Certainly I can see the palms. But why does everything else look so absolutely barren? Where are all the buildings! Didn't realize Iran was so close. Thanks for posting that.

BuJ said...

Sam,, very cool picture! thanks for sharing.

Still the palms are pretty impressive. I am not a supporter but I have to admit they are massive pieces of engineering. Have you been on one of the palms? I went on the first one a few yrs ago and it took us a good 10 min to drive up the trunk, that's big.

Plus if you notice the 2 palms have roughly the same area as AD island.

Tim Newman said...

Depends what you define as "space". Usually for claims such as these, space means a low Earth orbit such as the one travelled by the Space Shuttle (roughly 160 to 350 miles above Earth). And of course, for the claim to be valid I guess we'd have to be talking about it being visible to the naked eye, as opposed to some monster NASA telescope.

samuraisam said...

if you look at the image at approximately 25% of it's original size, the palm island looks no more than a dense cloud, it is indistinguishable.
i'd say even with this image at 25% it still represents a vast zooming in.

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