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I was wondering is the sunlight reaching from the general direction east? I came to this conclusion because the image is so dark on the west side however I am not 100% sure.GOES16 imagery

Michael Guest
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    This is a visible image display and I was wondering at this time the sunlight was reaching the U.S. from the general direction of west or east? I was thinking east because it is bright on the east side and dark on the west side. – Michael Guest Feb 16 '20 at 20:52
  • it is a geostationary satelite and you can find the details here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES-16 this question should have been migrated to https://space.stackexchange.com/ as this is where the resources about this can be found. – trond hansen Feb 16 '20 at 21:01
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it belongs in https://space.stackexchange.com/ – trond hansen Feb 16 '20 at 21:03
  • Okay I did not know that I am currently in a meteorology online class and we use the textbook weather studies 6th edition by the American Meteorological Society and this was in there because its looking at cloud cover. – Michael Guest Feb 16 '20 at 21:06
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    @trondhansen this is an Earth observation satellite and the data is a measurement of the state of the Earth. In fact many questions here are about other planets and they are still on-topic. Sometimes questions can be on-topic in more than one site, it's not a problem. Also, usually (but not always) questions are not migrated until the community closes them as off topic and they are considered on-topic somewhere else and then moderators get involved. We don't say "should have been migrated" as a close reason. – uhoh Feb 17 '20 at 04:35
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    This is a reasonable question and I feel it's on-topic here. I'm voting to leave it open! – uhoh Feb 17 '20 at 04:36
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    @uhoh Thank you for the clarification. – Michael Guest Feb 17 '20 at 06:45
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    This question is on-topic for Earth Science, although as I understand it rather basic, the Sun rises in the east therefore in the morning it's bright in the east but dark in the west, but perhaps I misunderstand the question. – gerrit Feb 17 '20 at 09:52
  • @MichaelGuest you question has go me thinking... Why are the clouds white and Australia black in weather satellite infrared images? – uhoh Feb 17 '20 at 11:07
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    @uhoh Yes that is a interesting question haha. – Michael Guest Feb 17 '20 at 19:27

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Yes. The time stamp says that the image is taken at 13:45Z, which means the sun is overhead in the Eastern Atlantic (12:45 PM local time in Cabo Verde and the Azores). In Winnepeg, near the upper arrow, it is 7:45 AM and still in darkness.

Being winter in the NH, places that are more southerly like Louisiana and east Texas in the US have light while places at the same longitude further north do not.

You can tell that the image is taken in winter from the south-west to north-east slope of the terminator (i.e. the line separating the light and dark areas, see discussion here).

M Juckes
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