Satellite sight: the earth through a Canon lens

The word ‘satellite’ might not be one which immediately springs to mind when you think about Canon, but we’ve been in the space industry for around fifteen years and transmitting incredible images back to earth from small but powerful micro-satellites since 2017.

At just 500mm x 500mm x 850mm, our first – the CE-SAT-1 – comes in barely bigger than a piece of carry-on luggage, but it’s loaded with an image processing system powerful enough to count cars from a low-space orbit of 500km. Held securely within its chassis is a combination of our Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera and a 400mm diameter Catadioptric Cassegrain telescope, as well as a PowerShot compact digital camera.

Since then, our team at Canon Electronics in Japan have launched two further image-capturing satellites. In 2020, the CE-SAT-IIB took an unreleased ultra-high-sensitivity camera to space, alongside a Canon EOS M100 and a PowerShot G9 X Mark II.

Last year, the CE-SAT-IE joined the pair in orbit, launched from
JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Centre. Designed to capture both still images and 8K video, it carries a specially adapted Canon EOS R5, attached to a 400mm aperture telescope, and a PowerShot S110. The EOS R5 was selected for its high pixel CMOS sensor (developed in-house by Canon engineers), which can produce images of 45 megapixels. Plus, it has a powerful autofocus, capable of operating under the severe conditions of space.

Together, the trio continually send images back to earth providing geospatial information for everything from earth mapping and traffic management, to agricultural and aquacultural monitoring.

However, as useful as these images are, there’s also something just plain magical about seeing the places we know captured from hundreds of kilometres above the earth. So, our image galleries below contain plenty of familiar places – albeit shown in very unfamiliar ways – but we’ve also included views of some glorious celestial objects, and the Moon and Mars, in all their cosmic drama and beauty.

Images used with kind permission from Canon Electronics Inc.