Radiation from the Sun is the major source of energy for Earth's oceans, atmosphere, land, and biosphere. The upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8 (which will cross North America, including portions of Mexico, the U.S., and Canada) is a good reminder of the power of our closest star. NASA's Earth science data collection includes data related to Sun-Earth interactions, such as solar spectral irradiance data as well as solar particle fluxes and their effects on Earth's magnetosphere. Harnessing this solar radiation through mirrors, solar cells, and other collection methods is an efficient way to produce electricity, especially in areas that have high Sun angles and relatively clear sky conditions.
The Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan, India, which is shown in these true-color reflectance (nadir bidirectional reflectance distribution function [BRDF] adjusted) comparison images, covers an area of 56 square kilometers and has a total capacity of 2,245 megawatts, making it one of the largest solar parks in the world. Both of these Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project images were acquired by the MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) aboard the ESA (European Space Agency) Sentinel-2B satellite. Swipe the bar back and forth to view the growth of the solar park between September 18, 2017 (A side on left) and March 24, 2024 (B side on right). Click on the icon in the upper right corner to interact with the map in the fully-featured NASA Worldview.
The HLS project provides 30-meter resolution, true-color surface reflectance imagery from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and OLI-2 instruments aboard the joint NASA/USGS at 8 and Landsat 9 satellites and the MSI sensor aboard ESA's Sentinel-2A and -2B satellites. Data processing—including atmospheric correction, cloud and cloud-shadow masking, spatial co-registration and common gridding, illumination and view angle normalization, and spectral bandpass adjustment—makes the imagery consistent and comparable across the instruments.
Visit Worldview to visualize near real-time imagery from NASA's EOSDIS, and check out more Worldview weekly images in our archive.
Dataset
HLS Sentinel-2 MSI Surface Reflectance Daily Global 30m (HLSS30 v002) doi:10.5067/HLS/HLSS30.002
