This Envisat image captures Typhoon Melor spinning in the Pacific Ocean northeast of the Philippines on 6 October 2009 before slamming into the main Japanese island of Honshu. Instruments aboard ESA’s Envisat allow it to observe various features of tropical cyclones, including cloud structure, wind and wave fields, sea-surface cloud structure, sea-surface temperature and sea-surface height. Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) optical instrument acquired this image working in Full Resolution mode to provide a spatial resolution of 300 m.