Why Don't The Clouds Move On NASA Live Cams?

View of the clouds over earth


Spend enough time talking to flat-earthers and you'll find that they are easily fooled by their own senses. For example, in the live feeds from the ISS and some satellites, it's hard to see the clouds move, so naturally the images/videos must be fake, right?

The problem with the non-moving clouds from space is that they actually are moving and we can see it if we are very patient. The reason why clouds appear to be moving rapidly from ground but standing still from space is because from the ground we can only see a minuscule view of the clouds and we are much closer to them. This concept is easy to demonstrate. Place your hand 5 inches from your face and move your hand across your field of vision. It should take just a few seconds and cover about 3 feet in length. Now have someone 50 feet away move their hand from one end of your field of view to the other end of it. It will take much longer and will cover a much greater distance.

Likewise, when we view the small portions of clouds from a close field of view, the clouds only need to move a mile or so to go from one end of our field of view to the other. However, from space a cloud moving 1 or even 10 miles is completely impossible to see with the naked eye. When the entire state you live in is the size of your thumb, you'll never see the movement contained in just a single mile, or even in a few miles.

However, if one is patient enough they can screen grab the footage every hour and a half to see the progression. The reason why they have to wait an hour and a half for an ISS screen grab is because the ISS orbits the earth in about 92 minutes. Thus, every 92 minutes the view should show the same location in the live feed and in that time the clouds in question will have moved roughly 30 miles on a normal day. Do that a few times a day and the clouds should be able to traverse about 300 miles in a given 12 hour period, which is about the width of Iowa. If you capture every 92 minutes for a full 24 hours, you will see the clouds move about the width of Texas.

The time it takes for a storm to move is a bit faster, 40-50 miles per hour. When I lived in South Bend, Indiana, I could call up my friends in Ohio and tell them what weather was coming their way in about 6-8 hours. That's because the jet stream in the Mid-west usually travel West to East and the distance was about 200 miles.

Clouds just do not move very fast. It only appears that way from our viewpoint. For experimentation, here is the live feed of the ISS. Feel free to do your own 92 minute examination.


Comments