
MSG-4, Europe’s latest weather satellite, delivers first image - eplanit
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/08/MSG-4_Europe_s_latest_weather_satellite_delivers_first_image
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johansch
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/eumetsat/19667653813/sizes/l](https://www.flickr.com/photos/eumetsat/19667653813/sizes/l)

"Original (16672 x 9378)" :)

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Ono-Sendai
Original size crashes my chrome tab :)

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victorantos
when it starts loading the image right click on the image and then Save As.
Chrome will crash but the picture will be downloaded(30MB+)

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addandsubtract
Direct link:
[https://farm1.staticflickr.com/265/19667653813_94a68f5644_o....](https://farm1.staticflickr.com/265/19667653813_94a68f5644_o.jpg)

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johansch
Preview on OS X works surprisingly well with a giant JPEG like this. It seems
like its doing clever stuff(tm) when decoding the image for various zoom
levels.

Chrome should (I mean.. it doesn't, but it really should) do this as well.

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wolfgke
Is there a (rather) easy way to obtain the MSG-4 images using SDR like it is
possible for NOAA and Meteor-M N2 ([http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-
receiving-noaa-weath...](http://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-tutorial-receiving-
noaa-weather-satellite-images/))?

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iso8859-1
Meteor-M N2 is in polar orbit, so you may need a fancy antenna to receive MSG,
which is in geostationary orbit (don't quote me on this, but this reddit user
has the same suspicion
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/23pquc/can_you_rece...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/23pquc/can_you_receive_geostationary_weather_sattelites/ch1roen)).

But EUMETSAT (contractor of MSG-4) has EUMETcast for distributing the images:
[http://satsignal.eu/wxsat/atovs/index.html](http://satsignal.eu/wxsat/atovs/index.html)
That works over DVB though, which would be disappointing for you since you
wanna talk to satellites.

There is a library for decoding the proprietary formats:
[https://sourceforge.net/p/meteosatlib/wiki/Home/](https://sourceforge.net/p/meteosatlib/wiki/Home/)

The linked Reddit thread has this very nice answer:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/23pquc/can_you_rece...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/23pquc/can_you_receive_geostationary_weather_sattelites/cgzy6te)

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happyscrappy
Live stream encrypted and six hour delay for unencrypted, am I reading that
right?

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phireal
To the best of my knowledge, this thing takes snapshots of its viewing field
every 15 minutes. That'll be tremendously helpful for calibrating atmospheric
and ocean models of ecosystem dynamics.

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kuschku
And Japan recently launched another satellite with the same interval and
resolution!

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phireal
Similarly, the South Koreans have a geostationary satellite (GOCI) [0]. It's
sampling interval is a bit lower (3 hourly) but has a high spatial resolution
(500m).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_Ocean_Color_Imag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_Ocean_Color_Imager)

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kuschku
The sampling interval of the Japanese and the European satellite is really
interesting, though, because it allows to view more than half of earth in
15min intervals. We can see live the movement of clouds and typhoons around
the earth.

This is really powerful.

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amelius
The linked page shows an image of the complete Earth. Is that really the
viewing angle of this satellite?

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iso8859-1
Yes, it is in geostationary orbit.

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paulrouget
So it's not a composition? It's exactly 10am UTC everywhere in this picture?

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pierrec
I think what iso8859 is trying to say is that a geostationary orbit is very
far, so it's still a narrow angle, as illustrated here:

[http://stream2.cma.gov.cn/pub/comet/SatelliteMeteorology/GOE...](http://stream2.cma.gov.cn/pub/comet/SatelliteMeteorology/GOESRBenefitsofNextGenerationEnvironmentalMonitoring/comet/goes_r/envmon/media/graphics/goes_orbit.jpg)

No composition required.

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kylehotchkiss
Anybody know what frequency + modulation this thing broadcasts? Any hope for a
little radio + twin helix antenna to pick up images?

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digibo
While joesoap's comment on the article page is hilarious, it made me think -
are there any technological issues to providing (nearly) real-time low-res
video feed? It would be scientifically useless, so this is more of a
theoretical question about the tech/physics involved.

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hliyan
Am I imagining it or does North Africa look dryer than it did in Apollo era
photographs?

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stargazer-3
If you check the caption you'll see that it's an infrared color image (except
for the blue channel, which is in red 600um). Therefore the picture is
probably more sensitive to the surface temperature variations, and,
consecutively, North Africa might look dryer indeed.

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Y-bar
This.

Also, the precipitation since the late sixties in the area surrounding the
Saharan desert has been below average, leading to desertification
([http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/environment-
book/desert...](http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/environment-
book/desertificationinsahel.html)):

> Years of above average rainfall from the 1950s to the 1970s, were followed
> by drought in the sahel starting in the late 1960s. The drought has had a
> devastating impact on this ecologically vulnerable region and was a major
> impetus in the establishment of the United Nations Convention on Combating
> Desertification and Drought.

So, during the 1960:s North Africa probably looked extra lush because it had
experienced over a decade of above-average precipitation.

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pavs
This has to be the sharpest picture of earth I have seen...

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pavs
You can see a lot of jagged edges on the left side of the higher resolution
image:
[http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/ima...](http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2015/08/msg-4_europe_s_latest_weather_satellite_delivers_first_image/15547768-1-eng-
GB/MSG-4_Europe_s_latest_weather_satellite_delivers_first_image.jpg)

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stargazer-3
Good catch! But I think the jagged edges there result from an arbitrary
clipping of the brightness values, done to remove the "noise" pixels, i.e. to
make the space look darker. If that's the case, it isn't the resolution that's
to blame - just a post-processing (for public release) issue.

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victorantos
Chrome crashes on me when I try to open original photo

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revelation
Really, the weather satellite delivered a 1.4M JPEG?

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kuschku
No, it delivered a 34M JPG
[https://farm1.staticflickr.com/265/19667653813_94a68f5644_o....](https://farm1.staticflickr.com/265/19667653813_94a68f5644_o.jpg)

