Taken 2/14/08 over the Gulf of Mexico from the GV and downloaded over the satcom. This image is one of hundreds of thousands of images taken during the GISMOS project. For projects where this is important, we can reduce the image size and send images to the ground in real time. For GISMOS, this was not necessary and only occasional images were transfered to the ground for quality check.

Digital images such as this one are later combined into a movie that can be viewed at faster speed to help researchers document, for example, cloud entry times or when the aircraft might have crossed a smoke plume. It is also possible to calculate cloud base and cloud top from the images using the known location of the camera and aircraft pitch and roll.

The little tube at the bottom left is the inlet of the UHSAS instrument. The camera is mounted in the right side wing instrument pylon. Field of view is 67 x 53 degrees. Aircraft altitude about 13,500 meters. (44 kft)