You will need a Windows Media Movie Viewer which you can download for free here.

Satellites are with us for good now. But what are they doing and what are they looking at? The answer is they are doing everything that they are capable of, which is increasing every day, and they are looking at everything. The following satellite pictures and movies are being posted for you interest. They pertain only to the planet earth, but satellites are photographing other planets, satellites, and space.

California Forest Fires:

We have heard a lot about these fires lately, so lets have a look and see what is going on. Several massive wildfires were raging across southern California over the weekend of October 25, 2003.

When you consider how high up these pictures were taken from, you begin to realize how vicious these fires really were.

But how does a satellite focus an image. The following is a movie of a satellite focusing out from the Baltimore Convention Center. All these zooms are compiled from data from several different satellites.

Windows Media Player Movie - 4.14 Megs

Now from further out we will zoom in on the Channel Islands in California. Notice how the resolution just keeps getting better.

Windows Media Player Movie - 4.14 Megs

The last place we are going to zoom in on is the Boston, MA: Park Plaza Hotel.

Windows Media Player Movie - 4.13 Megs

 

Latest Picture of the Eastern US from the GOES satellite

These are general pictures from the GOES satellite of the Western Hemisphere, Cuba. Bahamis to Florida and Goose Bay

 

Satellites are wonderful gadgets and can be very useful, but have we gone too far and become too dependant on them? If we lost our satellite communications could we still fight a war? Are we using satellites in ways which are intrusive to the average citizen? Are the nations of earth starting to launch and orbit so many satellites that they will some day interfere with space flight? Are we littering the orbiting pathways with old, useless satellites rather than retrieving them? Until we can answer all these questions with a resounding NO, we have a problem.