Robots on the Roof

  • Released Friday, September 17th, 2010
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:54PM
  • ID: 10621

The Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) is one of the first places that scientists turn when volcanoes, wildfires, pollution plumes, dust storms and many other phenomena-both natural and manmade-make an appearance. The network of ground-based instruments, called sun photometers, measures the many tiny particles blowing about in the atmosphere called aerosols. The particles are often impossible to see with human eyes, but AERONET's sensors can detect their presence by measuring subtle fluctuations in sunlight as the particles reflect and scatter the sun's rays.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center


Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Tapes

This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:
  • AERONET Web Short (wt) (ID: 2010097)
    Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 4:00AM
    Produced by - Eric DeJong