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#FedFeed – NOAA tracks lightning, storms and the sun’s corona

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association shared some of the first images obtained from one of its new satellites, including video from its lightning map...

Daisy Thornton@dthorntonWFED

March 7, 2017 2:32 pm

< a min read

Welcome to the #FedFeed, a collection of federal ephemera gathered from social media and presented for your enjoyment.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association shared the first images obtained from its new GOES-16 satellite’s Geostationary Lightning Mapper. The lightning mapper tracks individual bursts of lightning in order to determine whether a storm is increasing in strength, and could improve tornado early warning systems.

GOES-16, launched by NASA in November 2016, has proven to be particularly social media friendly. Here are a few more videos from its instruments:

Here, GOES-16’s Solar Ultraviolet Imager examines the sun’s corona.

These vapor images reflect GOES-16’s data on the winter storm that hit the Northeast US in February.

This is the same storm as it moved out over the Atlantic.

And this video uses that same storm to illustrate the differences in detail between the GOES-16’s instruments and the previous generation’s. GOES-16 is on the left.

Daisy Thornton

Daisy Thornton is Federal News Network’s digital managing editor. In addition to her editing responsibilities, she covers federal management, workforce and technology issues. She is also the commentary editor; email her your letters to the editor and pitches for contributed bylines.

Follow @dthorntonWFED