Visible Satellite

This visible satellite image measures the sunlight reflected by the Earth’s surface and clouds. Clouds and snow reflect a lot of light and are bright; the oceans absorb almost all incoming light and are dark; thin or low clouds and land have variable reflectivities or albedos and are varying shades of grey. The Earth is scanned every 15 minutes by the METEOSAT-11 geostationary satellite which is located over the Equator at 0 degrees W. Copyright 2020 EUMETSAT.