Hi and welcome to the  weather-satellite info page.

The weather images on this site were recorded by my excellent EMGO wx134-141 receiver, using the fantastic   aptdecoder or   WXTOIMG software to decode them.

Below is a picture of the EMGO radio.

The pictures are received by the radio then recorded, processed and published automatically by the pc so you may be the first person to see them!!

They are from the American NOAA series of weather satellites- they are in polar orbit and take pictures of the earth constantly as they orbit  at around 850Km above the earth's surface. The orbital time is around 100 minutes so they appear again in an hour and a half or so- but by this time the earth has rotated, thus they constantly sweep the entire globe. There are three operational at the moment NOAA 15, NOAA 18 and NOAA 19 (the most recent - launched Feb 09).  NOAA 17 has recently developed a  scanner fault - which can't be resolved (and it's not important enough a satellite to try and repair with a Space Shuttle mission!) so I have removed it from my list. Sometimes signals from other deactivated tumbling satellites cause problems with NOAA 15 signals. At my present my radio seems to be having tuning problems- preventing reception of NOAA 15 completely. In the UK NOAA 18 signals sometimes suffer from pager transmission  interference (this can be seen as horizontlal 'tyre' marks on the pictures).

The signals the satellites give off can be heard on any radio that can receive 137MHz-   WXTRACK is a good - free- predictor program for looking at when the best passes will happen. This is a recording of the image transmission. Notice the signal strength gradually increasing as the satellite passes above.

The pictures are intended to show up clouds and other weather features - not to look pretty - but I think they are fascinating and although they are black and white - false colour can be added to make them look nicer - compare the latest ones with the BBC weather pictures.

Normally two pictures are transmitted a visible one (actually near IR) and a thermal infra red one (see below) . The visible one doesn't show much at night - so another infra red one (mid) is transmitted instead. The thermal infra-red shows up interesting details even at night. False colouring and country borders can be added to the processed image. During day time passes, the two images are combined to reveal more detail. The pictures here have a resolution of around 3km per pixel. The false colour pictures are better in the summer.

This is an example of an image received and processed by the excellent wxtoimg program..... it's been enhanced by the program using multiple spectral analysis msa - and by adding contrasting colour with the help of a land/sea overlay and country outlines to show borders etc. The black cross is where my station is located.

The image below was recorded and processed by aptdecoder - superb free software that produces excellent detailed images.

Definitely produces superb images- the CLUTs - colour look up tables-  need to be finely tuned to each satellite and conditions to get the best results.

Here's an original visible/infra red  transmission- it has only been minimally processed (contrast) and the country mask added

- the near infra red (visible) image is on the left.

The latest pictures are here. Displayed are the 30 most recent images updated automatically as each pictures is received from the satellite- scroll down to the table right at the bottom of the main picture page to check for the next satellite passes.

The antenna is a turnstile type - mounted quite low (~3.5m) but it has a good view of the sky to the south, east and west. The North is blocked  by the house a bit - the antenna can't 'see' the satellite very well as it passes over Northern Scandinavia and Iceland- so pictures always look a bit fuzzy there. I could mount the antenna higher but not without blocking off some other angle - and anyway, the higher it is, the more likely there is to be interference from other sources. On the left and right hand edges of the images you can see the telemetry which gives a good idea of image quality. Pictures in the daylight show up the colour better but the night-time  IR ones still show the cloud well.

Click  here to see the latest pictures..

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