
Japan’s New Satellite Captures an Image of Earth Every Ten Minutes - revorad
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/10/science/An-Image-of-Earth-Every-Ten-Minutes.html
======
Syrup-tan
I wrote a simple shell script[0] to scrape and output the latest image.

It uses the tiles from their online satellite map[1], and can output images in
increments of 1x1, 2x2, 4x4, 16x16 tiles (each tile being 550px by 550px).
Here is an example with 2x2 [2]

If you have any suggestions or bugfixes, feel free to fork or comment.

EDIT: Also works for a single tile[3], also clarity.

[0] [https://gist.github.com/Syrup-
tan/1833ba1671c7017f0d59](https://gist.github.com/Syrup-
tan/1833ba1671c7017f0d59)

[1] [http://himawari8.nict.go.jp/](http://himawari8.nict.go.jp/)

[2]
[https://denpa.moe/~syrup/himawari8.png](https://denpa.moe/~syrup/himawari8.png)

[3]
[https://denpa.moe/~syrup/himawari8-single.png](https://denpa.moe/~syrup/himawari8-single.png)

~~~
SiVal
I wish there were a pair of these satellites separated by a couple thousand
miles/km, so we could view these images with next-gen, hi-rez VR goggles and
see the surface and cloud topography with enhanced depth.

~~~
vlasev
Let's do a sanity check on this.

Cloud height is at about 60,000 feet maximum (in the tropics
[http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/clouds/height_max.htm](http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstream/clouds/height_max.htm)).
Let's be generous and say this is 20 km maximum height.

Earth's diameter is 12742 km. The clouds are about 0.15 % of this size,
relatively speaking. The full images are about 11k by 11k, so we can say that
1 px is roughly 1 km. This means that the clouds will be on the scale of 20
pixels, roughly.

You know what, this might actually work.

------
tomkwok
Here is a 11000x11000 = 121 million pixel 'full disk' image [1] (lower
resolution at [2]) captured at 0340 UTC on 7 July 2015 by the Himawari-8
satellite, which I found on a blog post [3]. Real-time images from the weather
satellite can be found here [4].

[1]: [http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2015...](http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/full_him_rgb_2015188_0340.jpg)

Mirror of [1]: [http://d-h.st/cgHl](http://d-h.st/cgHl)

Warning: the JPEG file[1] is ~ 70MB in size.

[2]: [http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2015...](http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/small_him_rgb_2015188_0340.jpg)

[3]:
[http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/18804](http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/18804)

[4]:
[http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/data/himawari/sat_img.php?ar...](http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/data/himawari/sat_img.php?area=fd_)

~~~
tomkwok
I'm scraping the site and generating lots of 11000x11000-resolution images in
PNG format, available for you to download here [0].

Refer to filenames for date and time when the photos are taken. The file size
of the images (taken at around 0300 UTC each day) is up to ~ 150MB.

[0]:
[https://mega.nz/#F!r4JTxYJT!NAzBOkuBt2tuyYdnz8hXQg](https://mega.nz/#F!r4JTxYJT!NAzBOkuBt2tuyYdnz8hXQg)

------
Animats
Nice. Japan needs better weather data; too many hurricanes and too much
coastal development. From geostationary orbit, the resolution has to be low,
but it's always on.

The US has two geostationary weather satellites, which are usually parked
roughly over Panama and Hawaii. Neither has good coverage of Japan. Korea's
COMS satellite does, though. China has several, including one that's usually
pointed roughly at Taiwan.[1] Right now, you can see the hurricane that's due
east of Shanghai.

[1]
[http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/intersat/fy2e/satpic_s_vis.shtm...](http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/intersat/fy2e/satpic_s_vis.shtml)

~~~
rktjmp
Why does _geostationary_ orbit infer low resolution? Or do you mean "from
orbit" in general?

~~~
ShardPhoenix
Geostationary satellites orbit much further away (~35,786 km) from Earth than
non-stationary satellites (~2000 km).

------
pavel_lishin
Will there be a place where they can be downloaded? A live Planet Earth
desktop wallpaper would be pretty great.

~~~
peter_l_downs
Check this out:
[http://www.jma.go.jp/en/gms/largec.html?area=6&element=1&tim...](http://www.jma.go.jp/en/gms/largec.html?area=6&element=1&time=201507101830)

edit: The largest image resolution seems to be 800x800 (well, 800x815, with
the attribution footer). I wonder if the new satellite's imagery isn't part of
this feed yet? I hope that's the case, because it would be incredibly cool to
be get such high-res images.

~~~
warmwaffles
I hope that they upload the images to some server that we can grab and make
animations with. I can watch this all day.

~~~
pavel_lishin
A daily youtube video would be cool. I used to do that with construction
webcams.

~~~
tomkwok
I was thinking exactly the same thing... And here it is:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chA6M321dsY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chA6M321dsY)

~~~
peter_l_downs
This is fantastic, great job!

------
sosuke
The Earth is so beautiful.

I saw GOES-R [http://www.goes-r.gov/](http://www.goes-r.gov/) and the
pronunciation I heard in my head made me think of Ghostbusters.

~~~
bovermyer
I am convinced that that was intentional, though I have no proof to back that
up.

------
state
I have always hoped that someday Google Earth would just be live.

~~~
cporios
That day any notion of privacy will stop existing.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Unless you, I don't know, go inside?

~~~
sixothree
And never go outside?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its already assumed that there is little or no privacy in public spaces.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Privacy is on a sliding scale. There are certain assumptions we rely on when
we go out in public.

Imagine, for example, some future where you were effectively under constant
surveillance when in "public". Where your every action, every movement, every
utterance was recorded, categorized, transcribed, data mined, and then put
into a feed that anyone could subscribe to. That's what the complete absence
of public privacy looks like, and it's not great.

~~~
lsjroberts
Yeah, living in London you have several cameras looking at you permanently.
You can see a bunch of them via the TFL api as well.

~~~
eridius
But, AIUI, those cameras aren't networked together. They're all owned by
different people. TV shows like Torchwood that show some agency tracking
someone across the city using CCTV are showing something that can't possibly
happen in real life, because there is no one centralized authority (or even
handful of authorities) that have access to most of those cameras. Not to
mention the cameras themselves are just video, and not particularly stellar
quality at that.

Of course, I could be wrong, maybe someone in London really can track someone
across town using the CCTV cameras, but the above is what I understand from
what other people have explained in the past.

------
bargl
So my first thought was (will this replace the doves by space labs). Which was
an earlier story on HN.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8158295)

It won't because these are geostationary satellites (if I read the post
correctly). So you'd need at least 3 of these to get a good image and that's
not even considering some of the bigger issues with this. I also don't think
the resolution is on par. But the images will be really cool to see.

Link to space labs.
[https://www.planet.com/story/](https://www.planet.com/story/)

~~~
branchan
Uhhh, this spacecraft is for a totally different application.

Planet Labs doves are in LEO for low earth observation. This Japanese one is a
weather satellite to monitor the area around Japan.

~~~
bargl
Yup that's what I was getting at, my first thought was that they'd be
competing then I looked at the use cases and I wanted to point out that they
were different, but I might have been the only one who thought that in the
first place :-)

------
eseymour
Are there any other sources with constant up to date imagery like this? This
looks great and would like to see other current satellite images, and maybe
use them for visualizations or some projects.

------
chriscampbell
Is it common to lock a satellite into a stationary orbit?

~~~
capnrefsmmat
Satellite TV and communications satellites commonly do this -- otherwise your
satellite dish would have to track the satellite across the sky as it moves.

Defense Support Program satellites are also in stationary orbits so they can
watch fixed regions for nuclear missile launches with infrared cameras.

------
ChuckMcM
I find that we can do this sort of thing amazing. However on the animation the
fact that the terminator line changes angles is a bit unnerving.

------
johansch
The resolution of the "full disk" (i.e. whole earth) natural color images
appears to be 11000x11000 pixels every 10 minutes. I can't find any realtime
access to these images though - could anyone else?

They do have a cloud service for disseminating the imagery, but only for
"official use":

[http://www.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/en/himawari89/cloud_service...](http://www.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/en/himawari89/cloud_service/cloud_service.html)

"Until Himawari-8 becomes operational, NMHSs wishing to release Himawari-8
data and products to the public are requested to consult with JMA beforehand."

Edit: Here is at least a tile-zoomer with some sort of realtime access to
high-res imagery: [http://himawari8.nict.go.jp/](http://himawari8.nict.go.jp/)

~~~
hyperion2010
These are great! I've been looking for something like this for a long time and
I could never find anything out of NOAA that had this kind of time resolution.
Here about a big storm on the east coast? What does it look like from space?
Gotta wait to see whether someone will do a press release.

~~~
interknot
You might find
[http://realearth.ssec.wisc.edu/](http://realearth.ssec.wisc.edu/) useful.
Just be sure to click on either the "Presets" or "All" tabs within the
"Layers" section.

Oh, and if you decide to use the animation feature just try to be patient with
the way it loads in the individual times--once you've pulled down everything
the animation should look a good bit nicer.

