A LIS (Lightning Imaging Sensor) Browse Image shows a full day's lightning activity detected by the LIS instrument aboard the TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission) satellite. Data from the entire day (00:00:00 - 23:59:59) is shown. The instrument's view areas are depicted as light blue and beige as the instrument passes over water and land, respectively. Detected lightning activity is shown in red. There are two maps presented - the upper one showing all ascending passes and the lower one showing all descending passes. There is one full orbit (file) highlighted in magenta. The tick marks on the equator reveal that the ascending pass crossed the equator at 8:23 UTC (2:10 local) and the descending pass crossed at 9:09 UTC (14:35 local). From the timeline at the bottom of the image, it can be seen that these times fall within the time extent of file number 48. These are the last 2 digits of the orbit (file) number. The legend to the right shows that the first 3 digits of the first orbit of this day are 013. The data is contained in file TRMM_LIS_SC.vv.v_1998.032.01348.hdf. (vv.v indicates the LIS software version number.) The lightning activity toward the end of the orbit is from the storms over western Australia. The External status bar shows possible solar reflection (glint) past the center of the orbit. Each uniquely named LIS product file contains one full orbit (an ascending pass and subsequent descending pass). 1 - Date in yy-mm-dd and yyddd formats. 2 - Equator Crossing Times in local solar time. 3 - Equator Crossing Times in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). 4 - Start of ascending pass Orbits consist of an ascending pass and descending pass. An orbit starts at its southernmost latitude of the subsatellite point (typically 34 degrees). 5 - End of ascending pass The continuation of this orbit (the descending pass) begins in the lower part of the image. 6 - End of descending pass 7 - Timeline and status information This portion of the image shows flash activity, status bars as well as a timeline. The timeline along the bottom denotes the time of day in UTC. Flash activity is the number of flashes in each 180 second interval (plotted on a logarithmic scale). Each status bar represents a percentage of 180 seconds (3 minutes) which are warnings (yellow) or fatals (red). Processing Flags related to system processing software. External Possible South Atlantic Anomaly problem. Possible solar reflection (glint) is shown as a "dash" along the bottom of this bar. Instrument Possible LIS instrument problem. Platform Possible TRMM platform problem (usually ephemeris related). File/Orbit # The last two digits of the orbit number are shown on the status bar where possible. The orbit's higher order numbers are found in the legend (i.e., File/Orbit # (013XX). 8 - Red dots mark the locations of lightning flashes.

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