PIA08519: CloudSat Image of Tropical Thunderstorms Over Africa
 Target Name:  Earth
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  CloudSat
 Spacecraft:  CloudSat
 Instrument:  Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR)
 Product Size:  1194 x 211 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Colorado State University 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA08519.tif (756.9 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA08519.jpg (39.7 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Figure 1
Figure 1

CloudSat image of a horizontal cross-section of tropical clouds and thunderstorms over east Africa. The red colors are indicative of highly reflective particles such as water (rain) or ice crystals, which the blue indicates thinner clouds (such as cirrus). The flat green/blue lines across the bottom represent the ground signal. The vertical scale on the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar image is approximately 30 kilometers (19 miles). The brown line below the image indicates the relative elevation of the land surface. The inset image shows the CloudSat track relative to a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) visible image taken at nearly the same time.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/The Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), Colorado State University

Image Addition Date:
2006-06-06