Satellite Imagery Page 1of 6 Earth Orbiting Satellites Advantages of Satellite Remote Sensing Satellite Image Interpretation Satellite Image Analysis Earth Orbiting Satellites Remote sensing studies have considerably expanded due to the development of Earth orbiting satellites, which carry remote sensors. This has provided the capacity to monitor almost the entire earths surface, permitting global and regional studies to take place. For example, EUMETSAT who make an important contribution to numerical weather prediction, but also aid in identifying the development of potentially hazardous weather. In addition the weather satellites also collect long term measurements to support climate change, in particular ozone monitoring. At present the majority of remote sensing satellites are sun-synchronous, which means that the satellite's orbit is always at the same angle to the sun, hence the satellite observes the same scene at the same local time; this removes the time of day as a source of variation in illumination. Therefore images attained on different dates can easily be compared, as they are all illuminated in a similar way. The different sensors carried on remote sensing vehicles are suitable for different purposes and hence there are numerous environmental disciplines to which the technique of remote sensing can be applied. The different types of information that the systems gather allow the process to be exploited in a wide variety of research areas. Investigations of specific earth surface landforms will require certain levels of detail, and this will therefore influence which satellite image is used. For example, small-scale images allow large areas of the globe to be analysed and broad scale geological features that trend for tens or hundreds of kilometres, may only be observed in their entirety from an orbital altitude, escaping notice on low altitude aerial photographs. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Page 1 of 6