This season continues to be a busy one for hurricanes and typhoons in the northern hemisphere. And with all this activity, there have been lots of opportunities to observe these powerful storms from the ISS in support of the CyMISS (tropical Cyclone intensity Measurements from the ISS) project . Photography sessions of Hurricane Florence from the ISS were requested by our team during the mornings of September 13 and 14, 2018. October’s Image of the Month is a view of Hurricane Florence from supplemental photographs taken by the crew of the ISS at 11:41:15 GMT (7:41:15 AM EDT) on September 14, 2018 as the Sun was rising over the storm. At this time, the center of Hurricane Florence was located at about 34.2° N, 77.8° W and was just making landfall over North Carolina. Despite the fact Florence had been weakening over the previous two days as it approached the US, it was still rated as a Category 1 storm with sustained winds of about 145 kph (90 mph). The original JPEG image of ISS056-E-162816 from the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center is shown below.

This JPEG image was created as part of the automated image pipeline which processes the raw electronic files from the Nikon D5 cameras used on the ISS into image products shared with the public. The color balancing algorithm of this system combined with the large amount of Rayleigh scattering in this oblique view of the storm have combined to give the image an unnatural looking blueish cast. To create the Image of the Month, the original raw camera file was used and the color rebalanced using the cloud tops near the eye of the storm as a white standard. The resulting image was then cropped to remove parts of the ISS visible in the near field leaving an unobstructed view of the storm about 50 minutes after the Sun had risen over its eye. The reddish glow of the rising Sun filtering through the clouds is evident in the foreground. Beyond the eye of the storm, a bright solar glint is visible. This is created by the specular reflection of sunlight off of the flat ice crystals in the cirrus cloud layer which blankets this part of the storm.

This hand processed color image was remapped to create an image which approximates an overhead view of the Hurricane Florence. Shown below, this image covers an area approximately 1,000 kilometers on a side and clearly shows the spiral structure of this historic storm just as it was hitting the Atlantic coast.

The goal of the 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. 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 efforts. The original images are courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA Johnson Space Center. The work presented here was supported in part under CASIS Grant GA-2018-272.

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