I think the color channels are captured separately by the satellite, and then combined to form an image, and this works great for most things on the ground that aren’t moving very fast. But the plane moves a noticeable distance between color channel captures. There’s a really great example here.
Holy cow, this is super awesome, Brian! I’d say the satellite image is a composite of four shots, taken after each other. Three are taken with only one of the primary colors, each. One recorded “light levels”? How did you find that?
My first thought was chromatic aberration. The focal plane is the ground, so anything out of focus will be blurry… but blurry means different things for different colors.
But no – it’s definitely not that.
I agree with earlier comments: 4 images, taken at separate times. And I love how you can really see the cyan and yellow.
That fourth image (??) is pretty crisp. But what is that image? Contrast? Edges? Can you have a channel set up to detect just that?
Teach. Brian. Teach. 
I think the color channels are captured separately by the satellite, and then combined to form an image, and this works great for most things on the ground that aren’t moving very fast. But the plane moves a noticeable distance between color channel captures. There’s a really great example here.
it’s weird, though, that there are more than 3 images. I wouldn’t think they’d need that many channels.
Holy cow, this is super awesome, Brian! I’d say the satellite image is a composite of four shots, taken after each other. Three are taken with only one of the primary colors, each. One recorded “light levels”? How did you find that?
My first thought was chromatic aberration. The focal plane is the ground, so anything out of focus will be blurry… but blurry means different things for different colors.
But no – it’s definitely not that.
I agree with earlier comments: 4 images, taken at separate times. And I love how you can really see the cyan and yellow.
That fourth image (??) is pretty crisp. But what is that image? Contrast? Edges? Can you have a channel set up to detect just that?
Are we allowed to use Google for our insight?
http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/products-and-services/imagery-sources/