Proof of the Earth Wobble?

[Howard]

While the FY2D animation on SSEC appears to depict a consistent wobble pattern, it only displays images taken every hour within a 7-hour window.  Above is an animated 24-hr compilation of these images.  Although the Figure 8 Pattern is not entirely obvious from this perspective, the push on the N. Pole when the Sun is rising over the Pacific at 18:30 UTC is quite evident, as well as the rebound 12 hours later at 06:30 UTC.  The sudden cloud cover change at 10:30 UTC is due to the animation starting over again, returning to the beginning of the loop. 

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CREATING ANIMATIONS

STEP 1.  Go to the FY2D 8-image animation on the SSEC website:

http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/data/geo/index.php?satellite=fy2d&chan...

STEP 2.  Click on the "Stop" button at the upper left:

STEP 3.  Click on the "Show" button at the upper right:

STEP 4.  A new window appears displaying the frame that was open when the "Stop" button was pressed.  Right click over the image and select the "Save Image As" option.  Change the name of the file to something like "wobble1"to begin an alphanumeric sequence that will identify the chronological placement of the images in the animation and save to your desktop.

STEP 5.  Go back to the SSEC page where the animation is frozen and click on the right arrow button at the upper right.  This will advance the animation to the next frame.  Repeat steps 3 and 4, applying a sequence to the image file names (i.e., wobble2, wobble 3, etc.) and repeat step 5 until you've acquired all the desired images for your animation.

STEP 6.  To create the animation, download GIMP animation software (free download, 25MB) from the following URL:  http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

STEP 7.  Start the GIMP program, select "File" at the upper right click on "Open":

STEP 8.  The "Open Image" window appears.  Click on "desktop in the left hand column which will display all the images you saved in Step 4.  Double click on the first image in your animation sequence (wobble1.jpg in this example):

STEP 9.  You should see something similar to below.  Note the "Layers" dialog box to the right of the image.  This will display each frame of your animation and also allows you to control the animation speed.  The first image in the animation, "wobble1.jpg" is shown in the "Layer" box as "Background" since it is the beginning of the animation.

STEP 10.  To add the next image in the animation (wobble2.jpg in this example), right click to the left side of the image and select "File", and then select the "Open As Layers..." option:

STEP 11.  The "Open Image" window appears again.  Click on the next image in the animation, wobble2.jpg

STEP 12.  Notice that this image is now displayed in the "Layers" dialog box, above the first image shown as "Background".   Repeat step 11 until you have added all the desired images in your animation.  The order in which the images will appear in the animation start at the bottom of the "Layers" dialog box proceed upwards.  use the arrow keys at the bottom of the "Layers dialog box to adjust the order of the images, if necessary.

STEP 13.  The default speed of the animation is 100 milliseconds which is rather fast for displaying this type of animation.  To slow down the animation to a more appropriate viewing speed, right click over one of the frames displayed in the "Layers" dialog box and click on "Edit Layer Attributes":

STEP 14.  The "Edit Layer Attributes" window appears.  Enter "(325ms)" after the file name as shown below.  Repeat this step for every frame of the animation, including the first image, named "Background".

STEP 15.  To view your animation, select "Filters" in the upper Menu bar, then select "Animation" then select "Playback..."

STEP 16.  The Animation Playback window appears.  Press on the Play button to watch your animation.

STEP 17.  When you happy with how the animation looks, click on File at the upper left Menu bar and click on "Save".  The "Export File" box appears.  Select the "merge Visible Layers" option and click on the "Export" button.

STEP 18.  After being exported, the images need to be converted to GIF format.  Click on "File"again and click on "Save As".  The "Save As" box opens.  Click on the "+" symbol next to "Select File Type" within this box, select the "GIF image" option and click "Save".  It is also useful here to rename the file to distinguish it from the individual image files.

STEP 19. The "Export File" box will open again.  Select the "Save as Animation" button and click the "Export" button.

STEP 20.  Now the file is ready to upload.  Note that uploading time will vary depending on the number of images contained in the animation.  Happy posting!

[Nancy Lieder]

Here's off the African coast, matching the top of the Figure 8 seen above India.

[Nancy Lieder]

Here's another example of the up/down wobble:

[Nancy Lieder]

I have been peering at this closely as one can see the wobble in what the CLOUDS are going, but using reverse color in particular I could not see the land masses moving! But a geo stationary sat holds to the ground, stays above it and moves with the atmosphere above that spot, so might NOT show us the wobble. However, in the past when we found the wobble on sats, it was always in the motion of the CLOUDS. That's what we're seeing when we look at Howard's hourly changing day. I have concluded that the wobble is DETECTIBLE in the lower atmosphere cloud movement, as it is pushing the atmosphere layers around. Here's an example (I'm still picking at this so not yet finished). One can see up above India first the clouds are moving east, then stop and reverse direction entirely!

[Nancy Lieder]

I'm taking the animations apart to make stills so that I can focus on the wobble points, the Figure 8 proof, and noticed that Howard's original has 22 frames but the aligned animation made by Stra has 8 frames, so does not show as much action. More later ...

[Stra]

If we straighten the images out, this is what we come up with:

The face of Italy going north/south seems to be consistent with the wobble.

The image, though,  seems to be centered at its relative canvas center (N part of S America) so this might not be exactly what we're looking for...

Comments anyone?

[Stra]

As Fea pointed out, why is there a need to skew/rotate the images?

Mark all the four corners of the animation.