Mark Pentler

Fair to say nothing from me this weekend, we'll see how the weather is tomorrow when the worst of the storm has passed but not looking good.

Dark Star still seems to be on 1700 MHz today it seems and also dumps and telemetry on S-band apparently.

Looks like we got the same pass then! Here's N18 from just now, and an updated animation with appropriate delays to try and aid with the different time frames between images:

Been out this morning and may do more today, here's Metop-B, NOAA Natural Color, 60 odd degrees and blocked by the house to the south, included some other instruments too: Here's NOAA 19, 82 degrees, longer capture, but as this is an analogue signal with no error correction unlike Metop I get RFI issues, so I use the despeckle in SatDump to fix it: Finally, here's a little animation of the two centred on the UK, twenty minutes apart. I think NOAA 19 has a brighter AVHRR sensor maybe?

I keep meaning to get up early and fluffing it. Maybe I'll do some this afternoon but we have rain scheduled.

Gonna be a wet one! I may get out soon, bit windy though for dish holding!

pontiend I'm glad! Stick with it - I promise going forward it'll be worth it.

Dark Star it looks like a red dot for sure. Not sure thermal on 2-3 is calibrated yet but it may show up on that too. Mine was from day microphysics. Lovely stuff though, too windy for me to get the kit out!

Got the latest Iceland eruption on that!

Nice work all around, shame 2-4 is off still. Here is Meteor M2-2 HRPT today. It doesn't do LRPT anymore, and the MTVZA instrument is broken so the MSU imager is all you get, but it is well looked after and the calibration and detail is great, click for massive! 14:24 66 deg pass, 16.7 dB peak, 221/Ch4 Equ/Day Micrphysics/Precipitation 1603 27 deg pass, 15.6 dB peak, 221/Ch4 Equ/Day Microphysics/MCIR/Precipitation And a projection of the two, 221:

Tempted to go out tonight but night passes are kinda boring. Great captures! What's your average SNR on Meteors 3 and 4?

Just to be aware some of those composites use a pre-made map and separate the clouds out! MSA and MCIR definitely - SatDump should tell you if you click the info symbol next to the dropdown box. I did some captures this morning, here's NOAA 15, still trucking along on VHF despite a poorly scanning motor, 45 ish deg handtracked with a yagi, but I had issues tripping over the lead mid-pass so a bit noisy: And on the dish side I tested out a new coax lead this morning with just SMAs on the ends - no BNC to SMA adapters needed anymore. I had a much more stable noise floor with the 1.7 GHz signal. Here's two captures, firstly NOAA 19, channels 124 composite and then the NOAA Natural Color composite: And here is ESA's Metop-C satellite, with the Day Microphysics composite highlighting different cloud layers in stunning fashion: To give you a taste of the other instruments available on L-Band, here's a few other things. Some of these sensors have less resolution, but more precision than the AVHRR. From left to right here we have the Microwave Humidity Sounder showing an Airmass view, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit showing a false colour image of various temperature returns, the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer showing Low Level Water Vapour (good for seeing where clouds will form along with temperature gradients at various altitudes), and there are sensors doing radiation and surface wind changes that are a bit too dull to post. All of this along with 5 or 6 channels (depending on satellite) vs the 2 on APT or 3 on LRPT - usually 2 or 3 visible and 2 or 3 in IR. Some of these extra instruments look good when overlaid on top of an AVHRR image, and SatDump can do this with projections in various forms to make some fantastic images. Here is a projection of the above NOAA 15 and Metop C shots in Cloud Isolated mode, along with the snow cover composite from the MHS overlaid on the top: All in all a great morning!

Here's a page you may both like, it taught me a lot about interpretation of images and what the other instruments than just the main imager does: Weather predictions from satellite data | Jacopo's Lair WWW.A-CENTAURI.COM A tutorial on how to make your weather predictions, weather science and more using data you received from satellites yourself.

The above is an image from an ESA Metop satellite @ 1.7 GHz. The best thing about Metop is that it has error correction! The downside of this is that the signal is 5 MHz wide! I use an RSP1a to do my captures and a Nooelec GOES Sawbird+ LNA powered off a USB battery as a preamp. The quantity of data is ridiculous. MetOp has 10 instruments in the package, all doing different things with different sensors. Here is a Meteor HRPT shot. Same resolution as LRPT Dark Star, but much less compression. With more channels sent down you can do lots of fun composites, like this Meteor M2-3 Microphysics view: Dark Star not entirely sure if you can but it will be in FFT options, I wanna say second panel.

Fantastic! Tomorrow morning I have all to myself! So, the plan is to test a newly-made up lead which has much more solid connections and should lower my noise floor. I will primarily do 1.7 GHz HRPT, but for lower elevations the signal doesn't go through buildings. Luckily 137 MHz is a bit more reliable so I'll be doing APT and LRPT for the lower passes. I shall make some wide projections, maybe even some animations too.