Weather satellite images

Last updated on the 15th of August 97

Equipment

Equipment used to receive these images:

Hamtronics R139 weather fax receiver
MultiFAX internal demodulator card (some Meteor and Sich images, and the non-false colour NOAA images)
WXSAT program, available here (most later images)
PA0ROJ quadrifilar helix antenna (type 2), constructed in a few hours from $10 worth of PVC pipe and RG 58 coax
No preamp!

Receiving location

Espoo, near Helsinki, Finland, roughly at 60 N 24.5 E.

Sample images

NOAA 14, 05/19/1997 1130 UTC

A nice false colour image from Turkey to Iceland and Svalbard. Received/colourized with Christian Bock's WXSAT program for Windows (and a Miro DC30 video compression board as the sound capture device -- any decent sound card would do; audio output from Hamtronics R139). This is a 50% scaled down version of the original image.

Image - 83K JPEG

NOAA 14, 05/19/1997 1300 UTC

The next pass after the previous one, 1.5 hours to the west. There's a funny hole in the clouds over Iceland (it could be ice in the North, though).

Image - 86K JPEG

Meteor 3-5, 05/19/1997 1550 UTC

...and Meteor a couple of hours later confirms that the sea indeed is frozen, with ice along the coast of Greenland breaking into huge slabs. The Meteor really excels in resolving snow/ice features, like the valleys between the glaciers on Greenland, but it can't tell dry land from sea very well. Svalbard in the top right corner.

All current Meteor images are from the visible light band -- its IR scanner, originally operated during spacecraft night, failed years ago.

Image - 68K JPEG

NOAA 14, 04/01/1997 1200 UTC

Another false colour image with the same setup. Note the Alps covered in snow, most of it gone in the May picture.

Image - 79K JPEG

NOAA 14, 03/09/1997 1230 UTC

A sunny day in most of Europe, for once. A good pass from Northern Africa all the way near to Greenland; yet the maximum elevation of the satellite as seen from here was less than 30 degrees. The receiving location is near the right edge on the center of the image.

Infrared channel - 62K JPEG
Visible channel - 76K JPEG

Meteor 3-5, 03/10/1997

Received from the Russian Meteor 3-5 satellite. Imaging resolution is quite good, although the images are rather stripey and unfortunately seem to be deteriorating day to day because of the aging scanner. This is a small section of a pass, showing a sunrise in the southern tip of Greenland.

Image - 54K JPEG

SICH-1, 03/12/1997

SICH-1 is a former Russian satellite, nowadays operated by Ukraine. Here is a pretty image showing Alps and Northern Italy.

Image - 34K JPEG

SICH-1, 07/29/1997

Another SICH-1 image, this time showing decent weather in Russia; River Volga on the right.

Image - 80K JPEG

SICH-1, 08/14/1997

A bit more interesting image with the Baltic Sea on the left.

Image - 120K JPEG

OKEAN-4, 08/14/1997

OKEAN is a Russian satellite similar to SICH-1 (and actually built by the same Ukrainian company), but as a curiosity it usually has narrow radar and microwave images superimposed on the visible light band image. This pass is a good example, with Novaya Zemlya clearly visible in the radar/MW images.

Image - 39K JPEG

What is this stuff?

Want to know more? There's a wealth of information on the web -- try a search for "wxsat" or start from Alex A Sergejew's "Getting your own WXSAT images" page.

If you only want more pretty pictures, Les Hamilton has a treat for you here, as well as a good description of the SICH-1.

Sample sounds

Here are a couple of samples in case you want to hear how these birds sound like. Both are 11.025 kHz, 8-bit .wav files.

NOAA 14 - 46K / 4 seconds
Meteor 3-5 - 35K / 3 seconds

Mika Iisakkila 1997

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