A timelapse of planet Earth in infrared light, showing the fluid motion of water vapor in the atmosphere.
This animation was produced from images taken by the geostationary GOES 13 and GOES 15 satellites. The images are from the IR3 channel, which is sensitive to wavelengths of 6.5 um. 700 frames with a resolution of 3600×3000 were downloaded from each satellite over a period from November 30th, 2014, to January 26th, 2015.
The frames were processed to remove image artifacts, played at 7fps and interpolated by a factor of four. The resulting animation plays at a speed of 21 hours/second. The animations have been synchronized and are played side by side.
Image credit: NASA Processing: James Tyrwhitt-Drake
Source data from http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/