EUMETSAT MSG RSS 5-minute Rapid Scanning Service

(Click here to view the animation)

This animation was made by my GeoSatSignal software, which allows rectification of the oblique satellite view into a more natural projection (orthographic here). It shows storms developing and travelling north across Germany on 2008 May 30. Sadly, two pensioners were killed clearing up after these storms. The animation was produced by my GeoSatSignal software, and has been converted to MPEG-4 reducing the original 156MB animation to a more reasonable 4.2MB download, which is in DivX format. If you don't already have the free DivX player, you can download it here.

For best results, I suggest you right-click here, and select Save As to copy the file to your computer for playing.

(Click here to view the animation)

This animation was made from the recently launched MSG RSS (Meteosat Second Generation Rapid Scanning Service) which uses the backup Metoesat-8 satellite located at 10 degrees east to provide a new image over northern Africa and Europe every five minutes. The image above is from a single frame of a 20-hour animation covering May 26 and 27, 2008. The animation was produced by my MSG Animator software, and has been converted to Microsoft MPEG-4 format reducing the original 98MB animation to a more reasonable 14MB download.

For best results, I suggest you right-click here, and select Save As to copy the file to your computer for playing. If you can't play this animation on Windows Vista, try using IrfanView.

EUMETSAT Meteosat-6 10-minute Rapid Scanning Service

For your interest and enjoyment, here is a movie made from the EUMETSAT Rapid Scanning Service (RSS) which uses the standby Meteosat 6 satellite to provide northern hemisphere scans every ten minutes. Here the image has been remapped to a polar stereographic projection, and the infra-red channel used to make a false-colour image where the coldest cloud-tops are black, sea is blue, and land green to yellow depending on temperature.

The animation covers just over one complete day, and is in Windows AVI format, compressed down to 15MB. This has made the gridlines rather peculiar, but the cloud movement is beautifully depicted.

A 15MB animation is available - please request by e-mail)

Some of your questions answered....

Why are the clouds black? It just happens to be the colour palette I use and now prefer.
Why use polar stereographic projection? The raw data from the satellite provides a somewhat oblique view of the earth, but re-projecting the data removes this oblique view. The projection is widely used for meteorological applications.
Why is there a black band at the top and bottom of the picture? The imager does not scan the full height of the earth, and cannot see the North Pole because of its location.
Why does the black band move? The satellite actually moves slightly in its orbit, and there is now not enough fuel left to correct this.
Why is there a gap at the top left of the picture? The satellite is actually located at 10°E, so cannot see as far west as if it were at 0°.
How big was the original animation? The original 2.5 day animation was 650MB.

The Meteosat-6 Rapid Scanning Service was closed in January 2007.

Ship Trails Animation

Many thanks to Ton Lindemann for pointing out the value of animating the ship trails in the following animation. This is a false-colour animation from 2003-Jan-26 showing pronounced ship trails in the region just off the Bay of Biscay.

If you look at the animation carefully, you can see how the trails are affected by the winds, and you can also see the movement of some of the ships at the most narrow, pointed ends of the trails.

Download the zipped animation (2.5MB)