The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
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The Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 (MTG-I1) first image – view of Europe. This ‘zoom in’ over Europe taken from MTG-I1’s first image shows beautiful cloud features such as the ‘cloud streets’ over the Greek Islands created by wind, the so-called Von Karman vortices – also created by wind – downstream of the Canary Islands and cumulus cloud fields over the Libyan coast. The snow on the Alps and in Norway is also visible in greater detail than is possible to ascertain from the imaging instruments on Meteosat Second Generation satellites. The extra channels of MTG-I1’s Flexible Combined Imager, 16 compared to 12 on the MSG SEVIRI instruments, not only produce better true-colour imagery, but will also be useful to better detect dust, haze, smoke, cloud properties and wildfires, among others.
Read full story: New weather satellite reveals spectacular images of Earth