SP-168 EXPLORING SPACE WITH A CAMERA
The Secretary General of the World
Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, D. A. DAVIES,
wrote of the mosaic you see here:
"The launching of ESSA II added the
Automatic Picture Transmission (APT) element to the world's first
operational satellite system. Prior APT systems carried by Nimbus I
and Tiros VIII had confirmed the enormous value of the facility for
direct satellite readout at any point on the Earth's surface which
the APT system presents. At the time of launching ESSA II, APT
reception equipment had been installed at about 80 stations in 20
countries. Since then these numbers have increased steadily.
"This picture is a composite of 17
individual APT photographs taken on five orbits of ESSA II. The
easternmost three orbits were acquired at Washington, D.C., and show
how, within a space of some 4 hours, a clear presentation of the
cloud systems over an area greater than the whole of North America
may be directly obtained. The two westernmost orbits were obtained at
San Francisco and Honolulu. The cloud formations of the depressions
over the central Atlantic, near the Great Lakes, and off the west
coast of the United States are very well displayed and follow closely
the patterns to be expected from classical frontal theory. Indeed one
of the revealing features of satellite cloud pictures is the striking
confirmation they give of the frontal theory of the formation and
development of depressions first enunciated by the Norwegian school
of meteorologists nearly 50 years ago. The cloud formations of
Hurricane Alma are visible in the western Caribbean Sea.
"The picture demonstrates also that
cloudless land and water areas can be readily detected, including
areas of frozen water in northern Canada, snow cover on the Rocky
Mountains, and the icecap of Greenland."
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