Are there known satellite photos that show long atmospheric streaks spanning continents or poles?
Executive summary
Satellite imagery does show very long atmospheric streaks — including dense contrail corridors and multi‑thousand‑kilometre atmospheric rivers — but the reporting and imagery reviewed do not document a single continuous streak that literally spans entire continents end‑to‑end or stretches pole‑to‑pole in one unbroken line; instead, long streaks are regionally extensive and depend on the phenomenon, satellite type and viewing geometry [1] [2] [3].
1. Contrails: long, linear man‑made streaks well captured from space
High‑resolution Earth‑observation sensors regularly photograph long, straight cloud streaks formed by aircraft—contrails—which can form dense, linear corridors measurable across hundreds of kilometres, as illustrated by ESA imagery showing a dense collection of straight contrails between Cincinnati, Columbus and Pittsburgh [1]; NASA and UCAR research explain how aircraft wake and supercooling produce persistent ice‑crystal lines that can spread into extensive artificial cirrus [4].
2. Atmospheric rivers and weather features: contiguous plumes that cross ocean basins
Weather satellites, especially geostationary platforms and MODIS on polar orbiters, routinely capture very long contiguous moisture plumes such as atmospheric rivers and large frontal bands that can traverse ocean basins and impact entire coasts, with GOES instruments tracking atmospheric rivers from the central Pacific toward North America and MODIS used to follow multi‑day movement of storms and smoke plumes [2] [3] [5].
3. Arctic and polar “streaks”: satellite streak observations and the limits of coverage
Researchers have documented and developed tracking systems to detect satellite streaks and trails across the Arctic sky, highlighting both how crowded polar orbital tracks appear and how specialized campaigns can map streaks across polar skies [6]; however, standard geostationary satellites do not view the poles, a limitation explicitly noted in geostationary coverage descriptions, which constrains continuous pole‑to‑pole imaging from a single platform [3].
4. What the imagery does — and what it doesn’t — show across continental and polar scales
Taken together the sources show long linear features on the order of hundreds to a few thousand kilometres (contrail corridors, atmospheric rivers, storm fronts) that are routinely visible in satellite photos [1] [2] [3], but none of the reporting presents verified imagery of a single uninterrupted streak spanning an entire continent from coast to coast or a continuous line linking one pole to the other; global‑scale full‑disk sensors provide near‑global views but have blind spots (notably the poles for some geostationary systems), and polar‑orbiting instruments stitch repeated passes into time‑series rather than one instantaneous pole‑to‑pole frame [3] [7].
5. Practical reasons and observational constraints explain the gaps
Differences in satellite orbits, sensor swaths and temporal sampling mean long linear phenomena are captured in parts: geostationary satellites give continuous regional movies but leave polar gaps, while polar‑orbiting sensors like MODIS provide high‑detail snapshots that must be mosaicked over time to show continent‑spanning events [3] [4]; additionally, streaks caused by satellites themselves (reflections/trails) frequently appear in astronomical images and Arctic tracking efforts have measured those, but those streaks are short, transient streaks across optical exposures rather than persistent atmospheric lines stretching across continents [8] [6].
6. Where to look for authoritative images and how to verify scale claims
Authoritative sources for long‑streak imagery include ESA’s Earth observation galleries for contrails, NASA Earth Observatory and MODIS/Terra‑Aqua collections for plume and storm mosaics, and NOAA/GOES viewers for continuous regional monitoring [1] [5] [9]; verification requires checking sensor type, time of capture, footprint and whether an image is a single snapshot or a stitched time series—details present in the cited agency pages but not always in third‑party reposts [3] [2].
Limitations of this report: the provided sources document long satellite‑visible streaks (contrails, atmospheric rivers, satellite trails in Arctic observations) and sensor coverage constraints, but they do not include any verified instance of a single uninterrupted streak literally spanning a whole continent end‑to‑end or pole‑to‑pole in one photograph; no source in the set claims such an image exists [1] [6] [3] [4].