[if this were something happening today I'd go pretty overboard with the annotation but we'll leave it as is]

Seeing the Vikrant the other day reminded me of this image from around this time last year, where it conducted joint exercises with the UK carrier group. I had not yet taken up my shipwatching hobby then so I wondered if it was covered in any satellite imagery. Turns out it was very well-captured!

[I have a hunch this Sentinel-3 blob might be the Vikrant but no way to tell for sure.]

The ship also visible in yesterday's USGS Landsat images as well, timestamped about ten minutes earlier.

Realizing another application for Sentinel-3 data is "filling in" a scene when a ship appears near the edge of an imaging stripe. These two composited satellite passes are timestamped 20 minutes apart.

Another view of HMS Queen Elizabeth in Belfast in today's Sentinel-2 optical imaging.

Aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush visible at the edge of the imaging stripe in yesterday's Landsat images, departing Phuket, Thailand.

Indian Navy aircraft carrier Vikrant visible off the coast of Goa in today's Sentinel-2 satellite images.

Expanded view with better L2A color processing, showing the USS Abraham Lincoln as well as its sister ship the USS Carl Vinson nearby.

USS Ronald Reagan visible in today's Sentinel-2 imaging as well, underway off the Baja. [They've had their AIS radio off but I just had a feeling about this helicopter...]

USS Abraham Lincoln back at its home port in San Diego following record deployment, visible in today's Sentinel-2 satellite imagery.

USS Makin Island and accompanying amphibious ship USS John P. Murtha visible at the pier in Pearl Harbor in today's Sentinel-2 satellite images.

HMS Queen Elizabeth on port call in Belfast in today's Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar images.

I have thought about writing a little script that will optimize this from my "coarse" placement but that is probably a little excessive.

It is possible (but less likely) that the ship would be contained to just one pixel. More likely than not it spans multiple pixels. Since the AIS gives me a heading to orient the ship I place it so that its area is more or less divided proportionately to the luminance of the pixels that contain it.

To explain a little: if we go to the GPS position of the AIS Ping from the same minute the satellite went over we see it is very proximate to a patch of four "bright" pixels in line with the ship's heading. Unless that's a tiny cloud in the exact same spot that is the ship.

USS Ronald Reagan continuing exercises near San Diego apparent in today's Sentinel-3 pass. Think I have settled on an aesthetically pleasing way to indicate a ship's position in low-resolution imaging by just putting a drop shadow around a negative space.

[Alternative composition grouping related annotations a little better]

Amphibious carrier USS Makin Island and amphibious landing platform ship USS John P. Murtha visible in today's Sentinel-1 radar images approaching Pearl Harbor.

USS Abraham Lincoln returns to San Diego following its deployment, visible in the descending pass of today's Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar imaging. [I like the way the compositing turned out on this one]