The Window of the Universe
The Earth Now
The Earth, a blue planet of life
The Earth is the only life-bearing planet in the solar system.
The real-time images generated based on observations transmitted
from the meteorological satellite Himawari, in the stationary orbit about 36,000 km above the equator,
show us the current state of the planet we are living on.
In the exhibition, images of the Earth captured by Himawari every 10 minutes are used to
generate a high-quality and seamless video in real time, with the latest AI and image processing technologies utilized to project more realistic images of the Earth on the high- resolution screen.
Exhibition Contents
You can find violently swirling typhoons, clouds accompanying a long front extending from a low-pressure system, and bubbling cumulonimbus clouds. You can see how the border of day and night moves over the surface of the Earth as it rotates. Watching closely, you can tell that today’s weather, or the weather that you are actually experiencing now at this exhibition site, is synchronized with the movement of the cloud observed from the satellite. Yes, these are real-time images of the planet you are living on.
Back Story
Meteorological satellite Himawari
Himawari-9, a name that you may have heard in a weather report, is situated in the stationary orbit about 36,000 km above the equator, with the same rotation period as the Earth’s. So, the satellite looks as if it remains stationary in the sky from the ground, which means that the satellite can observe the same area of the Earth seamlessly for 24 hours seven days. The current operational satellites Himawari-8 and Himawari-9 have significantly increased functions compared to previous ones. The spatial resolution and observation bands have been increased significantly. In addition, the images can be observed in high frequency, such as every 2.5 minutes for the area around Japan, and every 10 minutes for the view of the Earth seen from the satellite. Also, Himawari-9 not only observes the weather, but also has the role of relaying meteorological data, tidal data, and seismic data observed from vessels or remote islands.
If you were an alien...
For instance, if you were an alien that has just arrived on this planet, what kind of information could you read from this image?
Probably, your eyes will instantly catch the white clouds and the ocean holding a vast amount of water. You can tell at first sight that water, which is so important for the development of life, exists in a huge volume in a liquid form on the surface and in the atmosphere. It is also quite obvious that a large-scale circulation is taking place, caused by the heat from the Sun and the rotation of the Earth, by observing the movement of clouds. Looking at the continents, it seems that there is land with a wide variety of conditions, from the ice-covered polar regions to the low-latitude deserts.
While it is not easy to detect traces of life from the orbit, you may find signs of the existence of plants in dark-colored areas on the continents, or that of phytoplankton in the light-green colored parts of the ocean.
You can see that the planet has a highly diverse and variable environment, compared to other planets in the solar system like Mars or Venus.
Cooperation
