Peter

This exceptionally rare photograph was taken by an Airbus Plaiades satellite on 30 November 2024 over northern Texas. The Plaiades is itself photographing *another* satellite (Starlink?), sitting much lower in orbit. The reason for the different colours is totally fascinating. The Pleiades satellites record images in multiple spectral bands: blue, green, red, panchromatic, and near-infrared. It takes the photos a split-second apart and combines the colors to generate a representation of what the human eye would see. That's fine for stationary objects like trees and buildings, but not so good when the subject is travelling around the Earth at five miles (eight km) per second!