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NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

This visible image of Super Typhoon Haiyan approaching the Philippines was taken from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite on Wednesday at 11:25 p.m. EDT.

A NASA satellite has been keeping an eye on Super Typhoon Haiyan as the monster storm pounds the Philippines with torrential rain and the most powerful winds seen in a generation.

The space agency's Aqua satellite passed over Super Typhoon Haiyan as the cyclone neared the Philippines recently. Aqua's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument, or MODIS, snapped a photo of Haiyan at 12:25 p.m. local Philippine time on Thursday (11:25 p.m. EDT on Wednesday).

The image shows the broad bands of thunderstorms surrounding Haiyan's eye, as well as the weather systems lashing the Philippines in the early morning hours of Thursday (EDT time), NASA officials said. [8 Terrible Typhoons]

Meanwhile, another Aqua instrument the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) gathered infrared data on the typhoon, measuring temperatures at Haiyan's cloud tops and at the surface of the sea.

"The infrared data revealed a sharply defined eye with multiple concentric rings of thunderstorms and a deep convective eyewall," NASA spokesman Rob Gutro of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., wrote in a description of the Aqua observations.

"The infrared data showed cloud top temperatures as cold as 210 degrees kelvin/-81.67F/-63.15C/ in the thick band of thunderstorms around the center," Gutro added. "Those cold temperatures indicate very high, powerful thunderstorms with very heavy rain potential."

NASA / JPL, Ed Olsen

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NASA tracks ferocious Super Typhoon Haiyan