New website explores planet Earth in near real-time
The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a new website which gives users the chance to view images of planet Earth from the world's largest Earth Observation Satellite in near real time. The MIRAVI website tracks the Envisat satellite around the globe, generating images of natural events in progress, such as fires, floods and volcanic eruptions. The images collected by Envisat's optical instrument, MERIS, are then online within two hours for users to explore the earth through the eyes of a satellite. The Envisat satellite circles the Earth in a polar orbit at an altitude of 800km, allowing MERIS to acquire global coverage every three days. The imaging spectrometer, MERIS, measures the solar radiation reflected by the Earth and needs the sun to produce an image. With the sun currently low over the Nordic areas, images of Scandinavia are not currently available, but in contrast, Antarctica will be visible for the next two months. The website follows on from ESA's last venture with Google, where it added over 130 new ESA satellite images of natural phenomena and manmade landmarks to the popular Google Earth three-dimensional mapping software application. The images were again collected by ESA's Envisat environmental satellite and added to the 'featured content' box on Google Earth, allowing users to take a more detailed look at places like the Palm Islands in Dubai or a plankton bloom off the coast of Ireland. These were then complemented by useful information such as facts and figures, scientific explanations and theories. ESA's Director of Earth Observation Programmes, Dr Volker Liebig said: 'Integrating ESA images into Google Earth provides an excellent opportunity to create public awareness and interest for space technologies, and in particular for those related to Earth observation and the protection of the environment. 'The imagery has been specifically chosen to afford Google Earth users the possibility to tour the planet from a bird's eye view and to gain a different perspective and appreciation of their planet by witnessing its splendour as well as its vulnerable spots.'