2023-04-19 11:41:34
On September 16, 2022, some bright green lines streaked across the sky of Japan and were recorded on video by meteor observation cameras located near Mount Fuji. However, at that time no one really knew what they were these lines that had appeared.
Today, seven months following the event, the curator of the Hiratsuka City Museum, Daichi Fujii, the operator of the cameras that captured the images, traced their provenance and discovered that what they had seen were the laser beams from NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite.
As explained by the scientist of the ICESar-2 satellite, Tony Martinofrom NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland (United States), this is the first time the team has seen images of the green laser beams that the device transmits from orbit to Earth.
“ICESat-2 seemed to be almost directly above it, with the beam hitting the low clouds at an angle,” the scientist remarked and clarified: “To see the laser, you must be exactly in the right place, at the right time and under the right conditions“.
Said satellite was launched in September 2018 with the aim of using laser light to measure the height of ice, water, and land surfaces from space, as indicated Europa Press. Specifically, the device fires 10,000 times per second and sends six rays of light towards Earth.
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Among other things, the aforementioned laser instrument makes it possible to calculate ice losses from Greenland and Antarctica, verify how many polar oceans remain frozenspecify the height of fresh water tanks and map shallow coastal regions.
Likewise, it should be clarified that laser beams are shot from hundreds of kilometers in space and they are not harmful. On the contrary, they are difficult to detect even if it were possible to stand directly below the satellite and observe it.
In fact, cameras and human eyes need the laser light to reflect off something in order to see it, which is why on this occasion the weather conditionssince on the night the images were taken there were enough clouds to scatter the laser beams and make them visible to the cameras but not so many as to block them completely.
AS./fl
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