The GOES satellites, East and West, are in geostationary orbits
22,300 miles above Earth. That allows them to monitor a whole
hemisphere's weather 24/7 from a fixed position above the the
planet. (GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental
Satellite.) NASA takes the GOES satellites' readings on cloud
cover and overlays them on a full-disk "Blue Planet" view of the
oceans and land masses. The result is a hemisphere-wide snapshot
of Earth like this one, produced every three hours. Although
this picture marks the end of our Advent calendar, you can keep
the satellite images coming throughout the next year with
GeoEye's free desktop calendar. The calendar consists of a
series of computer desktop wallpaper images, highlighting GeoEye
satellite views from the past 13 years. DigitalGlobe also offers
2013 calendar packages with an Earth-from-space theme, for
purchase through the company's online store. Seeing our planet
from space tends to broaden a person's perspective on Earth's
problems and preciousne