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from the 3d-4k-curved-screen-with-built-in-tivo dept.
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-goes-satellite-images-earth.html
Since the GOES-16 satellite lifted off from Cape Canaveral on November 19, scientists, meteorologists and ordinary weather enthusiasts have anxiously waited for the first photos from NOAA's newest weather satellite, GOES-16, formerly GOES-R.
The release of the first images today is the latest step in a new age of weather satellites. It will be like high-definition from the heavens.
The pictures from its Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument, built by Harris Corporation, show a full-disc view of the Western Hemisphere in high detail—at four times the image resolution of existing GOES spacecraft. The higher resolution will allow forecasters to pinpoint the location of severe weather with greater accuracy. GOES-16 can provide a full image of Earth every 15 minutes and one of the continental U.S. every five minutes, and scans the Earth at five times the speed of NOAA's current GOES imagers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @06:26PM
[Citation needed]
GOES satellites are geostationary, IIRC. I believe what was being aimed for was that it can provide a full image of the hemisphere of the satellite's location every fifteen minutes. (Not the whole earth.... even the ISS takes 90 minutes per orbit.)
Corrections to the above invited.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @06:47PM
You are correct. Here [noaa.gov] is some background info on where it will fit into the existing system.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Wednesday January 25 2017, @07:01PM
I think you're getting confused by the low earth orbit APT sats which do/did exist and being low earth orbit were not geosynch.
In the 80s back when SD NTSC and 32x16 characters was considered high screen resolution, 8 bit home computers had just enough power and memory to receive HF wefax (and I did so) and upgrading from there, just a tiny little 130 MHz wideband receiver (and a weird antenna, maybe preamp) and you could receive low earth orbit wxsats directly using APT format.
In the 90s or so there was a transition to geosynch and exotic DRM-ish digital formats, but old fashioned low earth orbit APT was scarcely more complicated than HF wefax and completely wide open.
Those were the days... NMC (coast guard) transmitted on 8080 KHz and I got amazing weather charts. By modern internet and HDTV standards they were not terribly exciting, but you have to remember in those days 256x192 on TV channel 3 was considered high resolution for a home computer, so you'd scroll around the monster wefax you received over the air. I had an 8 pin dot matrix printer and could print them out. My specific system used the cassette interface and some assembly language such that I needed no hardware other than the ham radio receiver I already had... We also did radio teletype that way.
It was more fun 30 years ago than it sounds today. Much like we "played outside" and it was fun although todays kids only play on tablets.