* Astronomy

Typhoon Longwang was a small but well organized and powerful storm system when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image at 12:50 p.m. local time, on September 27, 2005.


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At the time of this observation, Longwang was 1000 kilometres from Saipan in the Northern Marianas Islands, and well away from any significant land mass. It was travelling roughly westward towards the Chinese coast on a track that would take it through the southern fringe of the Japanese Islands.
Typhoon Longwang had sustained winds of 180 kilometres per hour near the storm’s centre, and it is projected to become significantly stronger in the following days.