The goal of the ongoing CyMISS (tropical Cyclone intensity Measurements from the ISS) project is to acquire image sequences of intense tropical cyclones (TCs), such as hurricanes, to support the development of an improved remote sensing method to determine more accurately the strength of these destructive storms using stereoscopy. Funded by CASIS (Center for the Advancement of Science in Space) which manages the ISS US National Laboratory for NASA, this project has amassed a large collection of images of dozens of storms during the last four years. While a number of processed images have been released to the public over the years through various online and print outlets, the CyMISS team at Visidyne (the prime contractor of the project) wanted to share some of the best images we have been creating.

May’s Image of the Month is a view of Super Typhoon Atsani as seen from the ISS on August 19, 2015. This storm was among the first intense tropical cyclones to be observed from the ISS using out project’s photography protocol which was specially designed to help create pseudo-stereo views. A total of 360 photographs, like the example shown above and in the Related Video below, were acquired by the crew of Expedition 44 during a six-minute observation session which started at 01:08:00 GMT. At this time, Atsani was located in the western part of the North Pacific at about 152.7° E, 18.7° N and had just been upgraded a Category 4 “Super Typhoon”. A synoptic view created from a mosaic of ISS photographs taken that day is shown below.

The Image of the Month is a 3D image created using a pair of close up views of the 50-kilometer eye of Super Typhoon Atsani taken a few seconds apart around 1:11:33 GMT. Only the red channel of the original color images was used in order to cut through any atmospheric haze and maximize the visibility of the cloud features. These images were remapped to approximate an overhead view before being combined to create an anaglyphic 3D image (a pair of stereo glasses with a red filter over the left eye and a blue filter on the right is required to reproduce the 3D effect). The resulting stereo view, which can be viewed at full size by clicking on the image below, covers an area of 225 by 150 kilometers and clearly reveals the structure in and around the eye of Atsani when the surface winds were at 130 knots (242 km/hr).

The CyMISS team at Visidyne would like to thank the crew of the ISS as well as the staff at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center for their ongoing efforts. The original images are courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center. The work presented here is supported in part under CASIS Grant GA-2018-272.

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Related Video

Here is a video created using the ISS images acquired by the crew of the ISS of Typhoon Atsani on August 19, 2015 for CyMISS:

Related Reading

See earlier articles on the CyMISS program here.