Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Oh Christ.... any ideas anyone?

The moon as seen via Meteosat or GEOS in IR

No idea of the source of that specific image, it looks too poor quality to be anything in the last 15-20 years - but modern Geostationary weather sats see the moon, and with IR it looks a hell of a lot like that, as this example demonstrates:

http://www.keesfloor.nl/artikelen/meteorol/maan/maan.htm

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/414 is also interesting.

Given the nature of the cameras (or radiometers) onboard such spacecraft (spinning platforms that build images line by line, a little like a FAX machine) - a fast moving object such as an NEO would be massively elongated or distorted. Only a near static object from the perspective of the spacecraft would build an image like that. The one on the two Meteosat MSG's are called SEVIRI - this page - http://www.esa.int/msg/pag4.html (particularly the 'SEVIRI imager' link) explains how it works.

You will never convince a conspiratorial, foil hat wearing nut job that it's anything other than the loading bay of the aliens that put chips in his brain and investigated his fleshy passageways. I'm hoping that a little bit of reading and research on your part will show that it's almost certainly the moon and not an NEO.

Doug

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