Receiving weather satellite images using SatDump | Hacker News Reader

Receiving weather satellite images using SatDump

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For anyone who is interested in just getting satellite imagery (though I understand the fun of pulling it out of the air), NOAA makes the GOES imagery available online from static web addresses.

https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/2... This link will always be the most recent shot of the continental US from GOES-16 (which is currently GOES-EAST)

https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES18/ABI/CONUS/GEOCOLOR/2... This link will always be the most recent shot of the Pacific and West Coast US from GOES-17 (which is currently GOES-WEST)

If you go to the base directories you can hunt around for different resolutions or for all kinds of other products, like full-disk images or even the lightning mapper.

I used to have a script that pulled the CONUS and FD (Full Disk) shots every 10 minutes. The goal was to auto-update my desktop wallpaper to the most recent imagery, but that proved to be frustratingly annoying to implement. Still, it was very cool to have an entire years worth of imagery at 10 minute intervals when I left it abandoned and it just kept running.

> For anyone who is interested in just getting satellite imagery (though I understand the fun of pulling it out of the air)

If you download satellite images from the internet, but you are connected via wifi, you are still pulling them out of the air, aren't you?

Behold the amazing Copernicus program, paid for by all European citizens:

https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/

It provides a nice API to download many satellite images in bulk: optical, radar, multispectral and hyperspectral images of various types are available for free. That's about one TB of Earth images acquired per hour, and all of them are archived for ever and for all to see.

with a fun little shell script, you can curl/wget your way into doing this automagically for you.* i did this with imagery for NASA images to create custom timelapse sequences of the sun from SOHO. they have a similar fixed folder structure for the frequency filters and image dimensions. it created an art exhibit that would keep the previous 24 hours of data current.

*beware, using wget will prove you are evilHacker in certain jurisdictions. /s

Is it possible to build a smooth hires animation of these? How often are the images updated?

Every ~10 minutes. It looks pretty smooth.

NOAA/NESDIS actually has animations posted on their website: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/conus_band.php?sat=G16...

Too bad there's no way to hide the ugly pixelated state/country borders to just see the beautiful raw photography.

The Full-Disk images don't have the baked-in borders:

https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/fulldisk_band.php?sat=...

https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/ has a UI for this

Do you still have the image archive? I started collecting them at New Years with a script (Goes x 2, Himiwari-8, EU Metsat) and would love to be able to get older imagery. I'm more than happy to pay for any bandwidth costs, etc if you can share the archive.

I don't, unfortunately. It occurred to me that I wasn't doing anything with the almost terabyte of images and didn't even have any ideas of what I would do, so I deleted it.

No worries. It is indeed tons of data. I've already stored 200GB+ and I just started on Jan 1st.

Google Cloud and AWS host the netcdf GOES archives among others. They are all there.

https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/noaa-pu...

I appreciate the response, this is good to know. I apologize for not being clearer but what I'm specifically looking for is the "GeoColor" full-disk imagery [0], which I don't think is archived anywhere (beyond a couple weeks worth). That imagery is generated from the raw data you linked, but sadly the code isn't publicly available.

There is a good amount of material around the techniques used to generate the GeoColor images [1][2] but understanding it well enough to implement it is a little above me.

If any HN'er can code up something like this, I'd definitely be interested in talking with them.

[0] https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk_band.php?sat=... [1] https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/documents/QuickGuide_C... [2] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atot/37/3/JTECH-D...

Do you have any kind of "geospatial spreadsheet" processing software to take in raw sat datasets and an algorithm for combining bands and applying filters to create an output?

Eg: the commercial ERDAS Imagine or other products?

I do not, no. Would that help?

I imagine it would - it seems to be a modern version evolved from ERMapper of the late 1980s | early 1990s that did exactly this kind of work.

ERMapper was a program that could pipe in many raw input multi channel data files from satellite | aircraft | other sources along with an "algorithm" file that described what to do.

One part of the task is to geo mosaic and merge data from seperate files together so that per output location there is an awareness of what cells are local to that output, the cell dimensions, type of data, channel, etc.

The algorithm part is to (say) combine data from channels 3, 7, and 9 using a particular filter and to adjust (say) for rayleigh scattering.

Such programs are geospatially aware spreadsheet programs that pipe in raw data an pipe out "cooked" or processed data.

When the GeoColor scientific papers you linked talk about the filtering operations they do on channel data they very likely are not "coding" in the sense of writing C code - but constructing "algorithms" by specifying which mathematics operations to perform on input channel data and writing that out in the algorithm file*.

* Which a pre existing program (perhaps ERDAS Imagine) reads and applies to it's input data, the raw captures from the satellites.

Yes, I wrote such things 35+ years ago, no I'm not in the field today and don't have a copy of ERDAS Imagine.

I'm not sure what the state of art for open source geomosaic software is these days - something like

https://github.com/sshuair/awesome-gis

might help to wind your way into the right kinds of geopspatial forums to discuss further, get references, etc.

Most commercial EO vendors have imagery sets freely available.

https://www.maxar.com/open-data

https://www.capellaspace.com/gallery/

You need to apply for a key here: https://developers.planet.com/open/

AWS Hosts Earth Observation data here:

https://registry.opendata.aws/?search=tags:gis,earth%20obser...

Also, Microsofts Plantary Computer has a bunch of open data as well.

I use the CSU's RAMMB SLIDER UI at https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/

Messing around with SDR is a really fun little hobby. There's something very satisfying about picking up signals that are just floating around waiting to be seen.

I briefly tried writing an SDR tuner in JavaScript a while back but there was a bug somewhere between Chrome and my SDR dongle that meant it failed whenever you tried to tune to a different frequency. I might pick it back up and see if it's possible now.

If you're interested in near-realtime weather images without having to fiddle with SDR, NASA collate images from loads of different satellites at https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/ and so do EUMETSAT at https://view.eumetsat.int/productviewer?v=default#

I used the EUMETSAT data to build this service which provides 3-hourly cloud maps for the whole Earth, which are surprisingly difficult to find: https://github.com/matteason/live-cloud-maps

I was expecting the NASA link to be a somewhat usable experience but it's... perhaps not for someone who just wants a weather prediction. The map is blank unless you add some layers, and I just spent "too long" failing to find anything useful. There are layers with data from 1987. maybe I need to use this on a desktop browser.

This link should show a full true-colour image from yesterday: https://go.nasa.gov/48cQIXE

And this one precipitation estimates: https://go.nasa.gov/49a68Nq

This is an amazing resource. Thank you.

I remember seeing your page somewhere, but it got lost between all the opened tabs and I didn't bookmark it. Now that I've rediscovered it, and found the creator, I can say thanks mate :-)

Ha, thanks! You probably saw it when I submitted to Show HN. Hope it's useful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_QpKGK0tuE

SaveItForParts is a great channel and does interesting explorations and detailed explanations about interacting with satellites :)

I'm glad someone mentioned him. I found his channel a while ago and I really enjoy his stuff!

WEfax is still useful and it's fun to experiment with different data modes. You don't need an expensive radio or even an SDR to receive it, any cheap used SW receiver will do.

Has anyone had any luck with a pvc qfh helix antenna like this one?

https://www.instructables.com/NOAA-Satellite-Signals-with-a-...

I already have an rtl-sdr picking up aircraft beacons and have this antenna on my todo list. Are there any benefits to buying a grid antenna vs DIYing my own helix?

I tried that project and couldn't pick anything up. When the satellite was passing overhead, the antenna just couldn't pick up the signal. I have coworkers that got it to work, so I think either I configured the wiring on the antenna incorrectly (the directions weren't very clear to me), used the wrong type of coax, or my soldering was too sloppy (or a combination of A, B and C).

I'd love to see more demos on how to make the QFH antenna.

Yes! https://imgur.com/a/ktXKD57

For EU people, this is a US geostationary satellite so no luck there, We have meteosat but its encrypted and have to pay a fee to use :( , even the russian (non geostationary meteor series) can be accessed freely.

It is possible to receive images from the NOAA satellites outside the US though, since they're polar-orbiting: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-noaa-weat...

GOES sats are geostationary but the NOAA APT satellites are encircling the planet and you can pick them up. Old tutorial but still relevant, just use "noaa-apt" tool[0] instead of WXtoImg. https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-noaa-weat...

[0] https://github.com/martinber/noaa-apt

Yeah, I've done it, built my own antenna and the whole receiving, the Meteor-M2 was in the same wavelength range and could be received but got hit my a meteorite January of last year

any recommendation for tutorial to build receiver for to get live satellite data?

The Thought Emporium made a great series on this. There are more these days though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGWFg7EDnyY

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