
How to Download Live Images from Government Weather Satellites (2018) - DyslexicAtheist
https://hackernoon.com/weather-sat-9620228789c8
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lwneal
The article describes how to receive weather imagery directly from satellites
using an SDR. It's a fun project, and surely useful if you don't have Internet
access.

However, if you do have Internet access, GOES-16 [1] provides a beautiful
full-color live feed of the Earth which you can easily download with
wget/curl. For example, paste the following:

    
    
        wget $(curl -s https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16 | grep -o -e 'https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/[0-9]*_GOES16-ABI-FD-GEOCOLOR-1808x1808.jpg' | head -1) -O earth.jpg && open earth.jpg
    
    

It's fun to use as a live-updating wallpaper or background.

[1]
[https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16)

~~~
bschwindHN
This works on MacOS without wget:

    
    
        curl $(curl -s https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16 | grep -o -e 'https://cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES16/ABI/FD/GEOCOLOR/[0-9]*_GOES16-ABI-FD-GEOCOLOR-1808x1808.jpg' | head -1) -o earth.jpg && open earth.jpg

~~~
lordgrenville
Do you know any reason this wouldn't work with zsh? I'm getting

    
    
      zsh: no matches found: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/fulldisk.php?sat=G16

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wrboyce
Zsh is trying to expand the glob, either quote it or prepend the command with
“noglob”.

~~~
lordgrenville
Ah, that was it. Much appreciated.

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jcims
One of the most interesting parts of this exercise to me is seeing the Doppler
effect in the frequency of LEO satellites as they pass overhead.

E.g.:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/7qalaj/visualizing_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/7qalaj/visualizing_satellite_doppler_shift/)

It’s also fun to build the absolute sketchiest MacGyver antenna you can
imagine and use it to pick up a signal from space.

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Mountain_Skies
The February 1985 issue of Rainbow Magazine had an program listing for Wefax,
which made it possible for owners of the TRS-80 Color Computer to receive
weather satellite images using a shortwave radio. This looks like a more
advanced version of the same thing. Back then it blew my mind that a home
computer could do such a thing. I didn't have a shortwave radio so I never was
able to make use of the program. Will have to play with this one, if for no
other reason than to fulfill my childhood fantasy of having an at home
satellite receiving station. Won't the ladies at my high school reunion be
impressed! (Probably not)

~~~
blantonl
The Wefax pictures you could/can receive over shortwave radio are
retransmitted from the satellites over shortwave for Marine interests.

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freehunter
Those pictures look... pretty rough. I know the author says you can clean them
up in software but doesn't provide any pictures of the images they've received
cleaned up in the software they've recommended.

Is this actually worthwhile for anything other than just hacking for fun? Or
is getting any useful data from this going to be a full-time job by itself?

~~~
brootstrap
Personally i would say this is just a fun project and novelty factor of
receiving a transmission from the satellite. If you actually want to get your
hands on weather data and do useful stuff with it let NOAA do the heavy
lifting. I can wager that most of us here probably dont want to write the code
to seam together satellite images and clean them up. However i wont stop
anyone, have at it friends.

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AuzzieStig
A good video regarding this topic
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjClTnZ4Xh4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjClTnZ4Xh4)

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killjoywashere
oh, man, I remember doing this in high school in the 90s (our system was run
by one of my favorite teachers. He narrowly missed the Challenger explosion as
a finalist of McAuliffe's spot). These satellites just rain information down
to Earth.

I think we used an HPUX system to ingest and visualize data from the antenna.
Definitely something Unixy.

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3dprintscanner
You can also download fairly up-to-date ESA imagery and radar images from
[https://scihub.copernicus.eu/](https://scihub.copernicus.eu/). This covers a
fairly large area worldwide.

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emmelaich
Or install the McIDAS suite:

[https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/](https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/mcidas/)

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donmb
Might sound as a stupid question but is it legal to consume and use the
images?

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jbotz
Yes. At least in the case of American satellites. Basically all information
produced by the US (federal) Government that is not classified is in the
public domain.[1] There are all sorts of weaselly ways that companies and in
some cases government agencies try to limit this (for example, West
Publishing, the company that publishes laws has copyright on the page numbers
which are needed to reference those laws[2]), but in this case we're talking
about raw data, transmitted on public airwaves, so there is really no question
that it's in the public domain.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States)

[2] [https://www.wired.com/1994/05/the-
law/](https://www.wired.com/1994/05/the-law/)

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stebann
Cool hacking project.

