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First view of aerosols from MetOp Second Generation’s 3MI instrument MetOp Second Generation (MetOp-SG) was launched in August 2025. Two of its instruments have already returned first data. Now it's the turn of the Multiviewing multichannel multipolarisation imager – 3MI for short. This hi-tech instrument, built by Leonardo, provides data on aerosols in our atmosphere.
The first images captured by 3MI are a view over Northern Africa, Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, acquired between 10:59 and 11:03 CEST on 28 August. On the left we see a standard view using natural light, highlighting clouds and land surfaces. The image on the right, based on polarised light measurements, reveals much finer detail of the atmosphere’s composition – such as subtle cloud structures over Italy and wildfire smoke on the left edge of the image, near Greece.
The images confirm that the instrument is performing well as it delivers its preliminary data streams.
When sunlight interacts with particles in the air, such as droplets, smoke or dust, the scattered light vibrates in specific directions, a property called polarisation. By capturing this perspective, 3MI provides richer insight into the type and size of particles in the atmosphere.
The 3MI instrument has a very wide swath (more than 2200 km), so images do not appear sharply in focus. Rather, the aim of the instruments is to detect atmospheric aerosols. These images are very important new observations that will enhance the capabilities of weather and climate satellite missions.
See two further images captured by 3MI on the same day: