Group for Earth Observation

The Independent Amateur Quarterly Publication for

Number 4

Earth Observation and Weather Satellite Enthusiasts

November/December 2004

Inside this issue . . .
Hendricus Lulofs describes
his ‘HJL’ false-colouring
process for NOAA APT
images.
Download Meteosat-8transmissions from
Atlantic Bird-3 using
C-Band - Kobus Botha
explains the procedure.
Changes in the East
African Glaciers and Ice
Fields - personal
reminiscences from Peter
Bradley.
David Taylor recalls his
trip to Utrecht to join
GEO’s Dutch colleagues,
and also extols theattractions of the Dutch
city for a short tourist
break.
For the Beginner—The
Challenge of Meteosat-8.
Mike Stevens explains indetail how he set up his
system from scratch.
Ton Lindemann describes
how he adds ‘Fleetwood’
Synoptic Data to his MSG
images using the latest
version of the ‘Digital
Atmosphere’ Workstation
Plus all the news about
GEO’s activities in the
Earth Imaging arena ...

Ton Lindemann prepared this surface chart using Digital Atmosphere Workstation v 1.1, GeoSatsignal, a Meteosat-8
false-colour image and a ‘fleetcode’ data file. Read how you can emulate Ton in his article on page 25

The scene at the Werkgroep Kunstmanen bijeenkomst, held in the ‘Nimeto’ on September 11, 2004.
Read David Taylor’s report on his trip to the Netherlands on page 16. You can learn more about theDutch Weather Satellite Group by visiting http://www.kunstmanen.nl
Photo: Ruud Jansen

GEO is led by
Francis Bell
Clive Finnis
Les HamiltonPeter Wakelin

Nigel Evans
Ray Godden
John Tellick

CONTACT INFORMATIONM

uch has been written during the past year about the EUMETCastdissemination service for MSG imagery available to European
enthusiasts via the Hot Bird-6 geostationary satellite. But a parallel
C-Band service, primarily intended for African countries and transmitted
from the Atlantic Bird-3 satellite, can also be received throughout
Europe. GEO reader Kobus Botha, who lives in South Africa, is now
receiving Meteosat-8 imagery via this route and describes how he set up
his station in an article which begins on page 7. It certainly wasn’t allplain sailing, and other GEO readers can benefit from his experiences.

G

EO’s Dutch counterparts, Werkgroep Kunstmanen, hold regularmeetings and workshops several times every year in the picturesquecity of Utrecht. GEO was represented at the recent September meeting by
Francis Bell and John Tellick, while David Taylor and his wife Cecilia
also attended during the course of a long week-end break in the
Netherlands. You can read the Taylors’ account of their trip on page 16,
accompanied by photographs taken both at the meeting and in andaround Utrecht itself. By all accounts this is a venture that other GEO
readers would find highly rewarding should they consider making such a
trip themselves in future years.

F

inally, as GEO reaches its first anniversary, a big ‘thank-you’ toeveryone who backed us by subscribing to GEO Quarterly. As Francis
Bell makes clear in his report on page 2, GEO has made great strides injust twelve months. Everyone on the GEO Team wishes all our readers apleasant Christmas and New Year; we hope we can count on yourcontinued support throughout the year ahead.

Public Relations and Education
Francis Bell,
Coturnix House,
Rake Lane,
Milford,Godalming,
Surrey GU8 5AB
England.
Tel:(01483) 416 897
e-mail: francis@geo-web.org.uk
General Information
John Tellick
e-mail: info@geo-web.org.uk
Articles and Images for Publication
Les Hamilton,
8 Deeside Place
Aberdeen AB15 7PW
Scotland, UK.
e-mail: editor@geo-web.org.uk
Membership and Subscriptions
Nigel Evans,
L’Eventail, 7 Gloster Ropewalk, Aycliffe,
Dover CT17 9ES
England, UK.
e-mail: members@geo-web.org.uk
Meteorological Consultant
Peter Wakelin
e-mail: meteo@geo-web.org.uk
Website Matters
Ray Godden
e-mail: webmaster@geo-web.org.uk

Contents
GEO Report
GEO at AMSATGEO Cover Images
Receiving MSG from Atlantic Bird-3 via C-Band
Lightning Strike
Rolling GEO Subscriptions and Renewals
Reception of WXsats in the Early Years
News from Brazil
Earth Imaging NewsA Visit to Werkgroep Kunstmanen

Francis Bell
Francis Bell

Publisher

Kobus Botha
Bill Johnston
Nigel Evans
Francis Verstraelen
Raul Fritz TeixeiraPeter WakelinDavid Taylor

2
3
6
7
10
11
12
13
15
16

Summer 2004 in the Five Villages

Robert Moore

18

NOAA-12 Reborn
The Indian Space Program - part 3
Adding ‘Fleetwood’ Synoptic Data to Meteosat-8

Les HamiltonPeter Wakelin
Ton Lindemann

20
23
25

Printing
Toptown Printers, Vicarage Lawn,
Barnstaple, Devon EX32 7BN.

Termination of the Meteosat-7 Services from 0°
East African Glaciers and Ice Fields
Copy Deadline for GEO Q5
Meteosat-8 - the ChallengeFirst High-Resolution Images of Phoebe
GEO Readers’ Survey
The ‘HJL’ False Colourization Technique
Software Showcase
Hurricane Images
GEO Helplines
GEO Back Issues
GEO Subscribers Discussion Forum
Weather-Satellite-Report Mailing List

EUMETSATPeter J Bradley

26
27
33
34
38
40
42
46
47
48
48
48
48

Mike Stevens
NASA
Hendricus Lulofs
Douglas Deans
Raul Fritz TeixeiraGroup for Earth Observation Ltd.
The Group for Earth Observation Limited is acompany in England and Wales limited byguarantee and not having share capital.
Company number 4975597.
The registered office is Coturnix House, Rake
Lane, Milford, Godalming, Surrey GU8 5AB

Responsibility for Constructional
Projects and Software
Every effort is made to ensure that the technicaland constructional articles published in thisQuarterly are correct. However, the ultimate
responsibility is with the reader to ensure thesafety of constructions and for any interfacingwith other equipment. GEO cannot accept
liability for shortcomings in any published designor any constructions carried out by members orother third parties.
Copyright GEO © 2004
The contents of this Quarterly remain theintellectual property of the Group for Earth
Observation Ltd. and its contributors. Copying oftext or images, either from the printed Quarterly
or from any electronically stored source, isforbidden without permission from the editor.

GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

Francis BellYear of Achievement
It was on October 29, 2003 that
our management team first
formed GEO, and the company,
with its legal structure, wasestablished just weeks later on
November 25. Somewhere in
there is a birthday, although I'm
not sure which date counts.

plus a number of others whom we can rely on from time to time
for advice and experience. We also have the names of several
members who have volunteered to help us run GEO. My thanks
to them all: these people will be contacted in due course.

Wow! How much can you achieve in a year? GEO has issued
four Quarterly publications; organised a successful symposium,with international visitors, at the National Space Centre; andparticipated during all three days of the AMSAT-UK colloquium
at Guildford University, where we promoted our group with thehelp of the RSGB and their mobile ground station, GB4 FUN.
Some of GEO's management team then paid a visit to Utrecht
in the Netherlands to share our interests with the very talented
Werkgroep Kunstmanen (you can visit their web site atwww.kunstmanen.nl) and we recently received, and accepted,
an invitation to contribute to the NOAA / NASA Direct Readout
Conference in Miami, where I will try to represent our interests,
and explain and illustrate our GEO user group's skills.
If anybody can tell me GEO could achieve more than that in ayear I would be surprised. Of course there are practical things
to be done, issues to be addressed and technical changes forthe future: with our dynamic interest area this will always be thecase. GEO’s management will always keep these issues underreview.
Members’ Contributions
One feature of our group which impresses me is the willingnessof contributors to send us copy and I must extend my sincere
thanks to everyone who has contributed to our Quarterly
publications. Without your efforts there would be scarcely
anything to publish.
Another feature of our membership that pleases me is their
willingness to respond to questions and issues raised in the
Quarterly. I know the copy I write can sometimes appear naive,and is sometimes deliberately provocative. I'm always happy togive a kick in the groin to the establishment, especially when I
believe I'm right! It is very rewarding to receive responses fromthese issues raised by myself and others in GEO Quarterly.
If you think you have anything to contribute please do nothesitate to send it to our editor, or even to myself. Remember,
we are a friendly group with a common interest in weather
satellites and their reception. We would like our membership tobe able to share your experiences, technical skills, weather
satellite images, anecdotes, photographs (of your 'shack',
receiving station, antenna etc) and any designs and projects
you are involved in. Wouldn’t you like to have something
published in our GEO Quarterly? Do please keep sending us
your copy, responses, ideas and suggestions.
The GEO Management TeamAs you will see from the previous page, the GEO management
team consists of seven people. We also have one consultant
Page 2

It is still my ambition to promote the educational side of GEO's
activities and the invitation for someone to oversee thisdimension is still on offer. Please contact me or any othermember of the management team if you can contribute in thisarena.
Equally I would like one person to take over the international
promotion of GEO. This would involve identifying radio societies
and other technical groups around the world and sending thema press release and a Quarterly publication. As I have said
before, GEO are not looking at membership solely formembership's sake. But if people do not know about GEO, theycannot join us!
Leicester 2005
I have confirmed GEO's booking at the National Space Centre,
Leicester, UK for our 2005 symposium. The date for your diary
is April 30, 2005. Our first meeting there was, by consensus,
judged a success and I will work on a programme for 2005
which I hope will be every bit as rewarding. However, thisrequest must follow. We do need to share information andexperiences so, if you have something to contribute, please do
not be hesitant in coming forward. We will not be making a
television programme for world wide reception—we will simply
be a group of friends sharing experiences and information.
There will be more about Leicester in the next Quarterly, but
meanwhile, if you would like to talk or make a display at
Leicester 2005, please e-mail me (or write) with details. You
can find my contact details on page 1. A zero response here will
result in a boring day.
GEO will hold its first AGM on this day. There are important
issues to discuss and, although we have absolute security
within the company structure, I would like to adopt a more userfriendly set of day-to-day rules plus a statement of our GEO
aims and objectives. I wish that the membership should feel asense of ownership and have influence within GEO. All rules,
aims and objectives will cover not more that two sides of A4.
Dates for your Diary
You should have noticed text in GEO Q3 by Darrell Robertsonof NOAA relating to a meeting in Miami this December. I will beattending to represent GEO and hope to make a presentation
illustrating our interests in weather satellites. You can read more
information about the Conference in the notice on page 3 and,of course, on their official website. The conference lasts fromthe 6th to the 10th of December 2004.
GEO were very pleased to have been invited by AMSAT-UK totheir colloquium at Guildford University last July and you canread about our demonstrations and presentations on page 4. I
hope we will be invited again next year. I will certainly invite
AMSAT-UK to Leicester 2005 and will write some copy for their
UK publication Oscar-News. If we are invited to AMSAT's
colloquium again it is likely to be held during the last few days

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November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

of July. GEO does not have a policy about amateur radio rallies:
we will just have to be opportunistic about these. We haveattended one so far. Perhaps we will publish our intentions on
our web site.
Membership
GEO can currently boast a growing international membershipapproaching the 500 mark and embracing 31 countries, which isvery encouraging both in terms of numbers and international
spread. However, it must be recognised that GEO has no
income other than our membership subscriptions and that wehave not yet started to break even financially; the subscriptions
do not quite cover the cost of running GEO. Our hope andexpectation is that, with our increasing membership over the
next year, we will break even. In the meantime GEO isunderwritten by its backers and is guaranteed.

NOAA invites Direct Readout users to its upcoming
conference entitled ‘A Decade in Transition’, scheduled for
December 6-10 at the Hilton Miami Airport and Towers
Hotel, Blue Lagoon Drive in Miami, Florida.

There are two serious points to make following from the above
comments. Firstly, do please renew your membership when it
becomes due. Don't expect a reminder. Membership is on arolling programme. The date of your subscription will cover you
for exactly one year, which is four issues of our Quarterly plus
the benefits that go with membership. If you don't want to renew,
that's fine, but that should be an active decision, notforgetfulness. See also Nigel Evans’ note on page 11.
The second point, which is related, is that membershipsubscriptions will have to increase. There is a balance point
where Quarterly print run costs plus postage have to match
membership subscriptions. Progress towards this situation is
encouraging. Please recognise that the GEO management
team have never received any expenses and I wish toacknowledge formally their commitment to the Group.
Membership renewal subscriptions for 2005 have not yet been
fixed but it is likely to be above the current UK membership feeof £12. Please do not be distressed at this. Membership of GEO
will still remain the best value-for-money subscription you canbuy. You will receive the best quality Quarterly publication about
weather satellites available anywhere. In this respect, I have inthe past paid tribute to the efforts of our editor, but must now
formally acknowledge the very high profile contribution made by
Toptown Printers of Barnstaple, Devon. It is they who convert
the editor’s copy into the quality final product that drops throughyour letter-box. I think they do an outstanding job for GEO.
Loose Ends
Quarterly No 1
Nobody has come back to me about my piece on the Cape
Verde Islands although I did notice they had three competitors
in the recent Olympic Games. I don't know if they won any
medals.

It is anticipated that more than 250 participants fromover 40 countries will attend. NOAA and NASA are cooperating in this conference with the aim of providing an
information exchange forum for the L-Band and X-Band
user community. The Conference will also provide a venue
for vendors to display and discuss their products andservices.

The DNA sequence CGA on Mars transcribes to the alphaamino acid glycine.

Full details can be found on the Internet at:

I was delighted to discover that my interest in imaging and snowin Africa (‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’) had brought such a
wonderful response from Peter Bradley. My thanks to Peter forhis profusely illustrated contribution which starts on page 27 ofthis issue. These historical records are vital if we are tounderstand climate changes on our planet.

During the next decade, the transition into new systems
technologies will result in significant changes affecting all
current and future users of NOAA satellites, particularly
those who receive data directly from the satellites. As thenext generations begin operating, all users will have tomodify or replace current receiving equipment andprocessing software. This Direct Readout Conference ispart of a continuing effort to prepare everyone for thesechanges.

Quarterly No 2
I wrote Moonlight Sonata 'in sea', the original composer wrote it
in 'C sharp minor'. A rainbow in moonlight exists but the humaneye cannot see it because the light levels are too low to see
colour. Take this Quarterly outside under only bright moonlightand try to identify any colour!
concluded on page 6 ...

http://DirectReadout.noaa.gov/miami04/

GEO is pleased to have been invited to thisconference, where we will be making a presentation
promoting the educational, amateur and selftraining interests of our international membership.

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

Francis BellI was very pleased to receive, on behalf of GEO, an
invitation from AMSAT-UK to attend their colloquium in
Guildford from July 30 to August 1, 2004
I have been a member of AMSAT for many years.
AMSAT’s main interest is in amateur radio satellites andtheir worldwide membership has funded, built, launchedand operated a number of amateur radio satellites: about
40 in all. I have listened to and used these satellites frommy own home and as a retired science teacher encouragedsome of my pupils to do the same.
AMSAT hold their colloquium at Surrey University in late
July each year. The venue is not a coincidence as Surrey
Satellite Technology Limited have their roots within the
University of Surrey at Guildford. The strong amateur
radio interest there gave birth to UoSAT-1 and UoSAT-2,
which laid the foundation for today’s expertise and thesubsequent development of other small satellites. Hencethe attraction of Guildford as a venue.
The colloquium lasted for three days and consisted of afull programme of lectures, activities and social events.
GEO promised to have on display live weather satellite
reception for all three days and to provide speakers on
direct readout weather satellite reception. GEO deliveredon this.

AMSAT was using. Thanks must go to David Simmons forestablishing the satellite downlink for us and to Carlos
Eavis for allowing us to position our dish on top of the
RSGB’s GB4 FUN vehicle for all three days. From thisposition we had a good view of the sky whereas, nearby at
ground level we were compromised: we did get a signal
but we represented a hazard to the public.
I thought we made good use of our room where we had two
computers running live Meteosat-8 reception. A computer
projector was provided by AMSAT and we displayed live
animations on to a large screen. I thought it looked eye
catching—perhaps even stunning. The other computer
was also busy receiving un-animated 15-minuteMeteosat-8 images.
APT equipment on display included Miroslav Gola’s
receiver and Ray Godden’s receiver with its
reprogrammed PIC for an extended range of frequencies.
The APT receivers and the turnstile antenna just outside
the room did receive signals but these were not displayed
because both the computers were otherwise occupied withMeteosat 8. However, live APT was there, backing up
GEO’s promise of live reception.
I must now express my thanks to EUMETSAT. They werevery supportive of GEO’s presence at Guildford in two
ways. Firstly they provided us with informative booklets
and posters covering their current and future satellite
programmes, together with information about data
dissemination. All these materials were appreciatively
received by the delegates—except for one set which I kept
for myself.

Positioning the MSG dish antenna atop the RSGB’s GB4 FUN vehicle
Photo: David Taylor

Our task of establishing live reception of Meteosat-8 via
Eutelsat’s Hot Bird 6 did present some minor problems.
There was a view of the southern sky at 167° but the
60 cm dish we were using had to be repositioned several
times. A balance had to be achieved between signal
strength, cable runs, trees, adjacent tall buildings andmembers of the public walking past. Resourcefully weachieved this and delivered a cable into the meeting room
GEO used, adjacent to the main lecture theatre which
Page 4www.geo-web.org.uk

Francis Bell addressing delegates during the
AMSAT Colloquium at Surrey University
Photo: David Taylor

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

The Orbview-2 satellite’s SeaWiFS instrument imaged typhoon Chaba approaching Japan on August 26, 2004.
Image: SeaWiFS Project, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, and Orbimage

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

Secondly, and more importantly than their papermaterials, EUMETSAT agreed for for the presence at thecolloquium of an outstanding speaker in Gordon Bridge.
Gordon, who has been with EUMETSAT for many years,
and is now a consultant on training, flew in fromFrankfurt to be with us. His presentation gave an
overview of EUMETSAT’s structure and both present andplanned future programmes. As chairman of the sessions
relating to weather satellite matters, I publicly thanked
EUMETSAT for their support of GEO’s activities. I do so
now again formally in print.
Gordon made available the contents of his presentation
on a small number of CD-ROMs which were quickly
exhausted by the enthusiastic delegates. Gordon hasoffered to supply me with further copies, so if you would
like one, either as an AMSAT member or as a GEO
member, please write, supplying your name and addressand enclosing four first class stamps or their equivalent,
to‘GEO’, Coturnix House, Rake Lane, Milford,
Godalming, Surrey, GU8 5AB. UK .
The other outstanding speaker who contributed to theweather satellite theme during the middle day of thecolloquium was David Taylor. David is a weather satellite
software guru and is a good friend of GEO. Hispresentation to the delegates was spectacular. He
demonstrated previously received images, theirsubsequent processing, remapping enhancing andanimation using his SatSignal software. I wish I was thatclever! David, who lives in Edinburgh, stayed at our home
for four nights. Nadine and I enjoyed his company.
Again with David: thanks to him for looking after GEO’s
live displays. Although I provided the computers,
receivers and other hardware it was David who made it
work in real time thus fulfiling our promise to AMSAT.
I judged all three days to be time well spent sharing ourinterests in weather satellites with another amateurorganisation. GEO just made a contribution to AMSAT’s
busy three day programme. They had other speakers andNovember/December

arranged tours around the SSTL ground station, clean
rooms and satellite assembly areas. Although I have been
before I went on one of these tours. I was pleased when I
saw a copy of the GEO Quarterly Launch issue outside
Prof. Sir Martin Sweeting’s office. I had to put my headaround his office door and congratulate him in his taste ofliterature. I was flattered when he said: ‘Oh yes we are
GEO members’.
GEO was not courting new membership but of course I
hope that any AMSAT member who took an interest inwhat GEO demonstrated will eventually join us. On a
reciprocal note GEO members may wish to join AMSAT.
Visit their web site at www.uk.amsat.org. I hope
AMSAT will invite us again next year. If they do I willkeep GEO’s membership informed of dates. For the
benefit of AMSAT members, GEO’s web site can be foundat www. geo-web.org.uk. It is definitely worth a visit.
Thanks must go to GEO’s team at Guildford. John Tellick
who was there every day organising and answering
questions, David Simmons for technical help and our two
principal speakers Gordon Bridge and David Taylor.
A Postscript
Now all of the above describes the events of Guildford. I
hope it acknowledges and thanks the people andorganisations concerned. What it doesn’t say is how much
fun it was. At home I pulled two satellite systems topieces, put them in the car with cables, connectors anddishes not knowing exactly how these were to berecommissioned in Guildford. But when it all worked at agood venue with appreciative delegates, it was verysatisfying and in the best tradition of our hobby. It was a
lot of fun!
My intention now is to represent GEO at the NOAA
Direct Readout Conference at Miami in December 2004.
This is high on my priority list as a means of promoting
the educational, amateur and self-training interests ofour group. I will keep the GEO membership informed andreport back in due course.

... continued from page 3
I have had responses to my mild rebuke to physicists and myquestion about water ascending to the tops of trees. Thank you
for reading the text. Liquid water is a polymer and is pulled to the
top of a tree like a fine threat of nylon. The energy for thisprocess comes from the evaporation of water from the leaves.
Biologists call this gradient 'water potential'. You may think:'What has this to do with GEO?' The answer is that, without theunique chemistry of water there wouldn't be any life here. Hencethe preoccupation of weather satellites looking at water using
multiple spectral channels.
A 'Quarterly Question'

Cover Images
Front
The SeaWiFS sensor aboard the Orbview-2 spacecraft
captured this spectacular true-color image of hurricane
Ivan on September 15, 2004
Image: SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Spaceflight Center, and ORBIMAGE

I have recently taken an interest in the sun and have written afew paragraphs for GEO Q5. In anticipation of this, here is aquestion: ‘How many solar diameters is the Earth away from thesun?’ Take the distance from the sun to Earth as 150 million
kilometers and the diameter of the sun to be its radiating
surface, the photosphere at 5770 K. The answer surprised me.
Page 6

The winning answer will receive a free admission to our
Leicester symposium in any year. Answers to me by post or
e-mail. I will pick a winner at random on Christmas day 2004,
and also publish the names of all correct entries in GEO Q5.

Back
A true-color MODIS image from NASA’s Aqua satellite
showing hurricane ‘Alex’ in its prime over the Caribbean
on August 4.
Image:Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

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November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Kobus Botha (ZS6KOB)
During February this year I decided to go for MSG and gave
myself five months to receive my first pictures—but what anexperience it was! Very soon I realised that there was nobody
in the whole of Africa to help me. Nor was there anyone abroad
either, because so far, everyone was using Hot Bird and using
different hardware from myself. I made an intensive study of
all the documentation from EUMETSAT and read every article
on the topic that I could get hold of—these really helped me alot.
Making a Start
Firstly I registered with EUMETSAT—very nice people there.
I then bought the hardware, a 1.8-metre solid dish, a Zintech
C-band LNB (uplink 3.4 - 4.2 GHz, downlink 950 - 1750 MHz,
polarisation is dualpol and noise temperature is 17 K) and acomputer. I had the computer specially built for me, aPentium-4 with 2.8 GHz processor, 1 Gb RAM and 80 Gb hard
drive. The graphics card has 128 Mb built-in RAM.
Figure 1 - Settings in the ‘Tuner’ tab of the Vbox TV card

Locating Atlantic Bird-3
It was not too difficult to locate Atlantic Bird-3. I used thecomputer program Satco DX (see http://www.satcodx.info for
more information) to work out the details for me. After you
have input your coordinates into the program it willgraphically show your position on a nice map, as well as
indicating the dish size needed and its azimuth and elevation(figure 4). In my case the azimuth was 304° and the elevation
43°. Finally, with the cable already connected to the Vbox cardin my computer, I manually turned the dish to more or less thecorrect position. A map showing the Atlantic Bird-3 coveragearea appears on page 19.
Configuring the Vbox Card
At this stage you must configure your Vbox card before making
the final positioning adjustments to the dish. I really sufferedwith the receiving card. Firstly I used an ‘ordinary’ TV card but
after many hours realised that the software supplied with it
was not compatible with the Tellique software provided by
EUMETSAT. So I bought the unit which EUMETSAT had
tested, the Broadlogic Vbox 2030 PCI card. It is very importantthat the software supplied with this card makes provision for
TCP-IP settings.

Figure 2 - Setting the LNB parameters in the ‘Advanced’ tab

But my troubles still weren’t over as I couldn’t get theBroadlogic control application software to load. I got the help ofa software expert who discovered that my brand new Windows2000 professional PC had decided that enough was enough: theoperating system had to be reinstalled, with the loss of most of
my programs! Please remove any firewalls on your computer
before installation of the card software—if not you will have
major software problems
I was now able to run the Broadlogic control software and makethe following settings in the ‘Tuner’ tab (figure 1):•••

Frequency
Symbol Rate
Polarisation- 3.7318 GHz- 11963 kSym/s- LeftFinally, I clicked the ‘Tune’ button to confirm these.

Figure 3 - Settings in the ‘Viterbi Rate’ for the Vbox TV card

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

Figure 4 - Calculate the satellite coordinates with Satco DX

Figures 5 (top) - Italy Figure 6 (foot) - Central Africa
Received via C-Band - September 15, 2004

Figure 7 - The 1.8-metre solid dish required to receive C-Band

Image © EUMETSAT 2004

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November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

Setup continued by opening the ‘Advanced’ tab. First
select ‘LNB Frequency’ (figure 2) and select ‘single’ under‘LNB Frequency’ (to indicate that you will use only one
LNB). Then, under ‘Low Frequency’, select 5.150 GHz.
Now select ‘Tuner Status’ (figure 3), which displays
values automatically derived during the demodulationand detection process. You cannot change these values.
• 22 kHz switch - Off• Low LNB (meaning 5.150 GHz)
• Signal to Noise Ratio (This window displays the highand low values over a period of time. Click ‘Reset’ to
set all the values to the current value.)• LNB offset
One item you can select is• Viterbi Rate - 2/3
For more detailed information on the parametersdisplayed under ‘Tuner Status’, please see the Help File.
Finally, I opened the ‘PIDS’ tab (figure 8) and pressed the‘Scan for PIDs’ button—be prepared to wait a couple ofminutes until this process is completed. Then, in the‘Available PIDs’ window, I selected ‘Transponder 1-3108(Eumetcast). I added PIDs 100, 300 and 301 to the ‘PID’
box in turn, followed by a click on the ‘Add’ button eachtime. If there are other PIDs in the ‘PID’ window, remove
them. Note that you will only get correct PIDs once yourdish is finally adjusted.

GEO Quarterly No 4

indicated by the Vbox software. My cable length is about
40 metres, so I fitted an in-line amplifier (at the position
where the cable was cut) but found that the signal was
better without it!
Now came the final adjustments to the dish. I spent many
hours on this, specifically to get the best position of thepolarisation of the LNB. LNB polarisation is very
important. The plane of the receiving part of the LNB
must be the same as that of the transponder on thesatellite: in the case of Atlantic Bird-3 this is left-handcircular.
To get the LNB into the best position it must be rotated.
The signal-strength meter is not sensitive enough for thistask so you have to rely on the Vbox software, whichshows the signal-to-noise ratio under ‘Tuner status’(figure 3). You need two people for this—one to turn the
LNB and the other to check the signal-to-noise ratio on
the computer. It is useful if you have a two-way radio tofacilitate communication. Rotate the LNB to get thehighest figure you can—if possible 3 or greater. This
figure does change continuously, and may even go
negative at times, but don't worry. On average it should
be between 2 and 3 most of the time.
You are now ready to receive your first pictures—enjoy it!
And Finally ...
Always remember that you will have between 13 and 18
volts in your cable to the LNB, so be very careful to avoid
a short-circuit, especially when you connect the signal
meter, etc. To play safe disconnect the cable from thecomputer when making dish adjustments (the current is
supplied by the computer via the receiver card to the cableconnector).
I use only one computer and now have absolutely no
problems. I do everything at the same time: receiving,
decoding, saving, animating and all the other options. You
really do not need two computers. I use the excellent
software of David Taylor, and really enjoy the animator
program.

Figure 8 - Settings in the ‘PIDS’ tab of the Vbox TV card

The Dish - Final Adjustments
With the software successfully installed, it was time tocomplete the positioning of the dish with the help of asignal-strength meter. There are many types of thesemeters on the market. The one I used was the Satfinder,
which is available at most dealers in satellite dishes.

All the problems I experienced are now history. The
compensation of the stunning pictures which I receive isfantastic. Figures 5 and 6 illustrate segments from thecolour composite images I am now obtaining. Figure 7 is aphotograph of my 1.8 metre C-Band dish. I really enjoy
MSG, and my system runs 24 hours every day. I hope that
this article will help other people interested in MSG who
have to make use of the Atlantic Bird-3 downlink.
Where there is a will there is a way- go for it!

I cut the cable about two metres from the dish, inserted
the Satfinder, then turned the dish manually until I
received the strongest signal (indicated on a scale of 1-8
on the meter). This accomplished, the meter was removed
and replaced by a barrel connector.
Back at my computer the signal strength was 82% asFigure 9 - Hurricane ‘Frances’ on its way to Florida - September 1

www.geo-web.org.uk

Image © EUMETSAT 2004

Page 9

GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

Bill Johnston
Bill Johnston, K5ZI, has been an amateur radio operator
for 45 years, and a weather enthusiast for even longer.
With his experience as an engineer on the professional
level, and ham on the hobby side, he has publishedseveral articles in weather and ham radio journals over
the years regarding the effects of lighting and its potential
to damage electronic equipment. His articles havedetailed methods by which one can prevent, or at least
minimise the damage that lightning might cause.
Whether your concern is for computers, weather satellite
equipment, ham gear, or any other sensitive electronic
device, his advice in general is as follows:‘If a thunderstorm is approaching, turn off yourequipment and completely disconnect it from the mains,antenna cables, rotator cables, and from all telephonemodem lines. For added protection, reconnect antenna
and rotator cables to a substantial earth ground. The
latter step ensures that any lightning-induced currents inthe disconnected cables are shunted to ground, and do notarc over to other equipment in the house. Though not one
hundred percent fail-safe, these measures greatly reduce
the risk of damage to equipment inside your house.’wall on the inside of the house. As usual, I had followed
my own advice—up to a point. Not a single piece ofequipment in the ham shack was connected to the mains,
the antennas, or telephone lines. However, the antenna
cables from outdoors had been left lying loose, without
being reconnected to a solid earth ground.
As a result, the lightning-induced current flowing
in them had arced to virtually every piece ofequipment in the room, leaving burn marks andmelted spots throughout.
As I write this the damage assessment is still under way.
However, this much is already known: my entire GOES,
APT and HRPT weather satellite systems are a total loss,
including the receivers, decoders, azimuth and elevation
antenna rotators, rotator controllers, and preamps. Threestate-of-the-art computer systems were totally destroyed(except for a single PCI parallel port accessory board
which miraculously survived in one system). The laser
printer was fried although the inkjet right next to it
survived.

As a strict adherent to his own advice, Bill has neverexperienced lightning damage to any of his ham or
weather satellite equipment. At least, not until the nightof August 1, 2004, when his house in southern New
Mexico took a direct strike during a particularly severe
thunderstorm which dropped 1.71 inches of rain in a little
over two hours. This is considered a substantial rainfall ina state where most areas receive no more than 8 inches inan entire year! Bill takes up his story ...
Following the lightning strike, my immediate concern was
fire, since much of the house immediately filled with acrid
smoke. Fortunately (?), the smoke proved to haveemanated from the many pieces of scorched electronicequipment, rather from the house itself. A more thoroughinvestigation the following morning revealed thesequence of events, and the full extent of the damage.
The lightning appears to have struck a large antenna
tower just outside the house. The tower is exceptionallywell grounded through a steel framework in a concrete
foundation, plus several additional copper ground rods
which extend downward to a depth of 8 feet. Nonetheless,a portion of the lightning’s current followed the several
antenna and rotator cables which come off the tower, andare draped through a series of U-bolts hanging from therafter tails under the eaves of the house.
One of the wooden rafter tails was burned and blown
apart. The cables drop down from the eaves to a 4-inch
diameter PVC pipe which penetrates the side of the houseto provide a path for the cables to enter the house. At thispoint the lightning split the PVC pipe, cracked the stucco
on the outside of the house, and blew the plaster off the

The antennas on Bill Johnston’s roof

On the amateur radio side of the room, the majority of theham equipment is a write-off. This includes several HF,
VHF, and UHF transceivers, as well as a state-of-the-art
receiver which tunes (or, more accurately, used to tune)
from 100 kHz to 2 GHz. The assessment is ongoing todetermine whether the few pieces which appear to have
only light damage can be economically repaired. A coupleof hand-held transceivers (‘handie-talkies’) in a desk
drawer survived, but a small GPS receiver next to them
did not.
There was additional damage in other parts of the house,though not extensive. One burner on the electric stove inthe kitchen was destroyed, as was a surge protector power
strip in another room. Surprisingly, the television set and
VCR (which are on a separate outside antenna not far
from the ham radio tower) suffered no damage other thanhaving their program memories scrambled.
concluded on page 11, column 2 ...

Page 10

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November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Nigel Evans
GEO plans to issue four quarterly magazines each year.
The first issue, which was free (GEO Q1), is issued toevery new subscriber. In order to spread out the renewals
it was decided at launch that these would become due on
the anniversary of the date of subscription.
Thus, someone who subscribed in January 2004 will havereceived Q1 2004, Q2 2004, and Q3 2004 with Q4 2004
and Q1 2005 to come. Renewal will be required to receive
the next four issues commencing with Q2, 2005.
In order to let you know when you should make your next
payment to GEO we have decided to use the same
reminder method employed by other similar publications
such as SPRAT the QRP journal. From the next issue of
GEO Quarterly, your address label will indicate whenyour subscription expires.
For example, the sample label opposite (which features
my own details) indicates that this subscription runs out
following the issue of Q1 2005 (March).

Please send any subscription queries tomembers@geo-web.org.uk.
... continued from page 10

These losses are covered by my homeowner’s insurance,
except for a deductible excess which I must pay out of myown pocket. Since I had never had an insurance claim in
the 40 years that my policy has been in force, I justrecently increased the excess from $500 to $2,000 in orderto save money on the annual premium. This makes me
feel that the lightning has struck not once, but twice!
The moral of the story is that you can never be too safe
when it comes to lightning protection. And just knowing
the rules isn’t enough—you have to follow them too. It willtake many months to rebuild my weather satellite andham station, but you can be assured that the rebuilt
station will have provisions to ground all those loose
antenna and rotator cables!

Marciano Righini, I4MY, from Italy sent this late afternoon NOAA-15 HRPT image acquired on August 13, 2004. The low angle of the lighting
accentuates the smoke plume from a fire in the ‘finger’ of Corsica (France) as it crosses the Tyrrhenian Sea and reaches Tuscany (Italy).
www.geo-web.org.uk

Page 11

GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

François Verstraelen
Some thirty years ago, amateurs who were interested in
the reception of weather satellites had only one way to go:they had to build their own reception station because it
was very expensive to buy a ready-built receiver. But
then, in the year 1973 there came out a very good book on
the Dutch market. It was called Weersatelieten and it
helped you on your way to build your own station withsurplus equipment that was left over from WW II.
You needed a VHF set and an HF set. The VHF set was
the BC 624 which was used in the famous Spitfires andHurricanes, the well known airplanes from the Battle ofBritain. The HF set was the BC 603, which was thereceiver used in the American Sherman and Patton tanks.
These receivers were not hard to find in the late 70’s andearly 80’s and were certainly not expensive. You had to
pay around £7.50 for a BC 603 and £10.00 for the BC 624
in those days. But once you had the two receivers then theconstruction work could be started.

The complete BC 624 VHF radio

The best results were obtained when you used the BC 624
only as a converter, so you could remove all the IF and LF
sections as well as the chassis. This was quickly done witha saw, leaving you with a nice robust converter with thedimensions of 14,5 x 14 x 5 x 19 cm. After this work wasdone you had to make alterations to the VFO section.

Some rotor plates had to be removed from the variable
condenser. This had to be done with great care because
the axle of the condenser was made from high-quality
porcelain which could easily be broken. Removal of therotor plates was necessary because the range of theoriginal receiver was from 100 to 156 Mc/s (MHz) andtuning was not accurate.
When this was done, then came the oscillator section andalterations to the HF section and mixer stage, followed bycoupling to the BC 603, which was very easy to realise.
Now what about the BC 603?
In the case of its use for WX
sats, this unit was used only
as an IF amplifier and FM
demodulator. The original
range of this rx was
20 -28 MHz and it was very
easy to modify it for AM
signals also. The receiver wascontinually tunable but also
had some preset channels,
though these were not very
useful for amateur use. It wasavailable with or without adynamo for the electricalsupply. I found it was best tobuild my own simple power
supply for 220 V and 12 V
which worked very well.

The BC 603

The modifications required to this RX were easy to do andwere followed by the job of realignment. This could betime consuming and required alignment equipment. I did
not possess these, and was fortunate that a good friend,
was able to do this for me.
The satellites I have heard with this equipment were
NOAA-6 (launched 1979) and NOAA-8 (launched 1983).
Unfortunately, I had no equipment to copy the satellite
images on to paper nor to save them electronically. But I
did see pictures that other amateurs produced from thesesatellites using very similar home-made equipment!
Let me say just a few words about how difficult is was toget on the information for the APT satellites in thosedays. It was really a ‘must’ that you had an othershortwave receiver and a telex printer to obtain
information sent out from meteorological stations:
Bracknell, Moscow, Offenbach etc..
As an antenna I used the 5 element Yagi as described in
GEO Q2 and indeed, still use it to this day.

The BC 624, minus chassis, after removal of the IF and LF stages
Page 12www.geo-web.org.uk

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Raul Fritz
Teixeira
fritz@funceme.brAt the end of last March an intense and very rare South
Atlantic cyclonic system, unofficially dubbed Catarina by
the people of Brazil, evolved, according to the U.S.
National Hurricane Center, into a Category-1 hurricane(figure 1). As it moved westward towards the Brazilian
coast it caused death and destruction over both sea andland and was an object of great debate amongst
meteorology experts in Brazil. The storm, reported in theprevious issue [1], was considered to be the first hurricanein the South Atlantic in recorded history.

Figure 3 - A cyclonic system near the coast of southern Brazil,
observed by NOAA 17 at 12:52 UT on May 9, 2004 .

Following this unusual event, some other cyclonicsystems, much weaker, were identified in the same
oceanic area (figure 3).
The May 9 cyclone, unlike Catarina, moved eastward,
away from the coast. By the following day it was muchless intense and in process of dissipation.

Fig. 1 - Hurricane Catarina near the coast of southern Brazil.
NOAA-16 channel 1 (visible) image acquired on March 26, 2004, 17 UT.

Curiously, climate change scientists working in the Met
Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Researchin the UK, recognised that the region where Catarina has
been formed was coincident with
one of the areas where theirclimate model predicted thattropical storms in the South
Atlantic could appear in the
future [2].

Images from polar orbiters are specially good to view thestructure of clouds, mainly in the visible channels, andcan be used to visualise and analyse the occurrence ofvaried kinds of mesoscale atmospheric phenomena(ranging from a few to several hundred kilometers) suchas the squall lines resulting from convergence lines(boundaries). These are generally accompanied by heavy
rain. Continuous and broken squall lines are groups ofindividual cumulonimbus organised around long
convergence lines. Gust fronts with moderate or intense
winds can precede these lines. An example of a tropical

Also very curiously, onJanuary 19, 2004, a cyclonic
circulation with scatterometer
winds (from the QuikSCAT data)
indicating tropical storm
strength developed in the South
Atlantic Ocean just east of theBrazilian state of Bahia [3](figure 2).
This, however, can not becompared with Catarina, which
was really a mixed system. Froma baroclinic structure, Catarina
acquired barotropic (tropical)
characteristics like a hurricane.
However, new studies andcomputer simulations will bemade to better understand thephenomenon.

Figure 2
A cyclonic circulation in
the South Atlantic Ocean
near the coast ofnortheast Brazil.
NOAA-15 visible image
acquired on January 19,
2004, 08:45 UT.

Figure 4 - A squall line acting over part of north-northeastern Brazil(the receiving site is represented by a small white cross).
Channel-1 NOAA-12 image acquired at 19:00 UT on March 25, 2003.

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Page 13

GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observationsquall line can be seen in figure 4, where extensive anvil
clouds can be observed. They are so named due to theirshapes, similar to blacksmith's anvils, that spreadoutwards from the upper parts of mature cumulonimbus.
Squall lines can develop in active areas of theIntertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the region where
the trade winds converge and where precipitation girdles
the globe near the equator. Figure 5 shows a squall line
associated with the ITCZ and penetrating inland. The
squall line is more pronounced in figure 6, where it
depicts many groups of well developed shower clouds.

Figure 5
A squall line associated with the ITCZ and penetrating into northnortheastern Brazil. NOAA-16 channel-1, April 9, 2003, 16:15 UT.

November/December

meteorology, land and water resources. In this institution
meteorological images are used mainly for analysis andweather forecasting. Meteorological and land-use
products are also generated from the various satellite
channels. The site also receives images each 30 minutes
from the geostationary Meteosat-7. A special software
package was developed to work with the images in thevisible, infrared and water vapour channels. This allows
us to view the complete image or a sector remapped fornortheast Brazil. It also allows us to produce image
animations and colour-enhanced cloud top temperature

Fig. 7 - A Meteosat-7 visible image - 17:00 UT on May 20, 2004.

products. Figure 7 shows an example of Meteosat-7 visible
imagery acquired at Funceme. Note the sunglint on thewaters of the tropical North Atlantic Ocean immediately
above of a line of clouds associated to the ITCZ. Note also
the great convective complexes of clouds over Liberia andSierra Leone in western Africa.
Visible images from geostationary meteorologicalsatellites are very useful to identify and monitor weather
systems and execute short-term weather forecasts(‘nowcasts’) focused on a 6-hour time frame. This isspecially true due to the high frequency of the images (30or 15 minutes). As an example, the sequence of images infigure 8 shows a gust front originating from a gigantic
mass of cumulonimbus in process of dissipation over theocean.

Figure 6 - The squall line has penetrated farther inland.
NOAA-12 channel-1 , April 9, 2003, 19:40 UT.

Funceme
The images presented here were received by theFoundation for Meteorology and Water Resources of theState of Ceará (FUNCEME), a non-profit state bureau
located in the northeast region of Brazil and working with
Page 14

In the first image the cumulonimbus is visible as a white
dot surrounded by lines of clouds forming arcs. In thesecond and third images the cumulonimbus isdisappearing and the line arcs of clouds approach andtouch the coast. In the final image a black dot (cloud freearea) appears where the cumulonimbus was located and aline arc of clouds (cumulus and stratus) advances inland.
The strong descending air (downdraught) from thecumulonimbus has given rise to clouds in long arcs
accompanied by gusting winds.

www.geo-web.org.uk

continued on page 19 ...

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Peter Wakelin
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission to End
After being granted a short reprieve to monitor the 2004
hurricane season, TRMM is to be de-orbited by acontrolled descent into the Pacific Ocean. The spacecraft,launched in 1997, has been highly successful inmeasuring tropical rainfall for more than double its
designed lifetime. The joint US/Japanese mission carries
microwave and near-infrared sensors as well as a uniquerain radar.
The spacecraft's altitude was raised by 50 km during
August 2001 to extend its orbital lifetime, and natural
decay is still some way off, but it was financial constraints
that led to the decision to end the mission although all
systems are still working. It will be replaced by anadvanced Global Precipitation Measurement mission inabout five years' time.
TLE Continuation Assured - For the Time Being
For many years, the source to the public of Two-Line
Elements (TLE) has been NASA's Orbit Information
Group (OIG), who distribute the orbital data derived fromthe radar and optical sensors operated by the US
Military. This is changing and NASA's role will be takenover by US Air Force Space Command. Those who obtainorbital data directly from OIG should make the changes
indicated on the OIG website. It is probable that
restrictions will be placed on the redistribution of data so,
as most readers get their data from secondary sources
such as Dr Kelso's Celestrak site, some changes may beneeded to get the data. The implementation of thechanges has been delayed slightly but it seems
inconceivable that weather satellite orbit data would be
withheld although it is known that there is much internalsquabbling within the US Air Force about continuing to
make public the TLEs long provided by NASA.
Farewell to Two Old Friends
GOES 8 operations have been terminated and its residual
propellant was used to boost the spacecraft well above thegeostationary orbit where it will continue to encircle
Earth for millions of years.
NOAA 11 has been deactivated and its batteries havebeen isolated to reduce the risk of a pressure build-up
causing an explosion. A battery explosion may have been
the cause of a recent DMSP spacecraft fragmentation
which created numerous debris pieces in an alreadycluttered 800 km sun-synchronous orbit. The tenuous
atmosphere at 800 km ensures that dead satellites anddebris at this height do eventually burn up but it takes
about 300 years.
TIROS-N Still Transmitting
Mike Kenny of the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne,
Australia, reports that TIROS-N, the prototype of thepresent generation of NOAA polar-orbiters launched in
October 1978, is transmitting CW on 136.77 MHz and137.50 MHz when in sunlight and is interfering withNOAA 12 which uses the same frequencies.

There have been several instances in the past of old
spacecraft resuming transmissions after years of silencebut usually only when the entire orbit is sunlit. However,Mike says TIROS-N has now been transmitting for twomonths.
India Back on Track after Explosion
Just seven months after a major fire killed six workers at
the Solid Propellant Space Booster Plant near the
Shiharikota launch site in eastern India, the Indian Space
Research Organisation successfully launched the firstcommercial flight of the GSLV (Geostationary Satellite
Launch Vehicle) on September 20. It carried the Indianbuilt EDUSAT into a precise geostationary transfer orbit
from where the satellite's own propulsion system took it
to a geostationary position at 74 degrees east longitude
alongside Kalpana 1 and INSAT 3A.
Feng Yun 2C Launched
China launched its third geostationary weather satellite on
October 19 from the Xichanglaunch site in Sichuan Provinceof southwest China.
Feng Yun 2C is destined to operate above longitude 105 degrees
east. At the time of writing, on
the day following launch, thepayload is in a geostationarytransfer orbit with an apogeewell short of geostationary altitude, according two the firsttwo-line orbital elements.

Launch of Feng Yun 2C
Photo: Xinhua.

NOAA N-Prime to be Repaired after Accident
The NOAA N-Prime spacecraft was badly damaged in an
accident at Lockheed Martin's Sunnyvale, California
factory in September 2003 when it fell off a ‘turnover cart’used to rotate the satellite from a vertical to horizontal
position, because securing bolts were missing.
NASA, who buy and launch satellites for NOAA,
investigated the incident and published its final report on
October 4, following which Lockheed Martin have agreed
to forfeit all profits on the contract to help offset the $135
million repair bill according to Space News.
Although the spacecraft chassis suffered most damage,
many of the components will have to be replaced and boththe high resolution infrared radiation sounder and solar
backscatter ultraviolet radiometer will have to be either
rebuilt or replaced. The planned early 2008 launch dateis still expected to be achieved.
The report states that the cause of the accident was
Lockheed Martin personnel's failure to follow proper
procedures but also cites ineffective government oversight
as a contributing factor. The report is available at
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/65776main_noaa_np_mishap.pdf

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Page 15

GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/DecemberDavid and Cecilia Taylor
As a result of a chance remark made by
Arne van Belle at the Leicester GEO
Symposium in May—’Utrecht is a really
nice city’—we decided to attend theSeptember Werkgroep Kunstmanen
meeting both to support the Dutch Group,as they had supported GEO in Leicester,and to see the sights of Utrecht andperhaps some other places in The
Netherlands. Checking the flight times
from Edinburgh showed that at least an
overnight stay on the Friday was requiredin order to arrive early enough for the
meeting: so we decided to extend by one
day either side, travelling on the Thursday
and returning on the Sunday. A bit ofresearch on the Internet led to our finding
a hotel in Utrecht which was only a shortwalk from the meeting at Nimeto College,
and just about 20 minutes walk from thetown centre.
Cars can be a burden in Dutch towns, so
public transport is best. Not wanting to put
anyone out by accepting offers ofaccommodation in the forest or lifts to andfrom Utrecht, we looked to see what public
transport was available and found a fast
and frequent train service from Schiphol
Airport to Utrecht, taking either 50 minutes(with one change) or 60 minutes (direct
stopping service). Looking on the map it
seemed that Hilversum was almost on theroute, so thoughts of visiting the Broadcast
Museum there passed through our minds,
or perhaps viewing the architecturally
renowned Town Hall. It also emerged that
the International Broadcasting Convention
was on in Amsterdam on the Friday
afternoon, so if it were wet there would besomething to do!
We were blessed with excellent weather
on the Thursday and Friday, and even athree hour delay at Edinburgh airport whilea faulty aircraft was replaced did not
dampen our delight with Utrecht. As wewere late, and as the weather was
excellent, our train diversion to Hilversum
did not materialise, and we took thequicker train to Utrecht. Not knowing thetown, and having a heavy portable to lug
around, we took a taxi to the hotel,
although we could probably havemanaged without. The train ticket could bebought with cash or credit card at the
airport, but if you use a credit card makesure you have one with a PIN.
Page 16

We wanted to go up the Cathedral Tower,
but we were too late for that day and could
instead book for Friday morning. We wereable to get an excellent DVD telling us of
the Cathedral’s history, though. Our gentle
wanderings on Thursday afternoon led us
to discover the Oudegracht (Old Canal)
which has a stretch devoted to restaurantsof all cuisines, combining indoor andoutdoor seating at the water’s edge. This
local knowledge proved useful when we
dined out with our Dutch and
Italian/Belgian friends from the meeting,on both the Friday and Saturday evenings!
Back at the hotel, we were able to play the
DVD about the Cathedral, and discoveredthat half of the Cathedral had actually
been blown down by a hurricane in theseventeenth century. Oh for nowcastingfrom satellites to be able to get out of theway! The separate tower had survived,
although we now doubted the wisdom ofbooking a Tower visit the next day! Anotherof the delights of the Hotel Ouwi was a free
WiFi connection to the Internet so we wereable to confirm our safe arrival in Utrecht.
Friday arrived, and no change in theweather(confirming
oursatellite
downloads of the night before). First thing
on the schedule was the Cathedral Tower.
Well, it actually feels quite solid inside, tobe honest! The guided portion of the tour
stops short of the open bell part of thetower, but those who are very brave (andstill have some energy left) can proceed tothe top of the tower from where there aresome wonderful views to be had. We tried
to locate Nimeto College, and succeeded(I think!). What was much more surprising
was being able to see the Ajax footballstadium in Amsterdam from Utrecht! We’dnoticed both the stadium and the CISCO
offices as ‘noticeable buildings’ as we
passed them on the train.
We spent so much time up the tower that it
was time for lunch when we returned to
ground level (and remembered to collectour bags—not allowed up the tower). We
had a snack in one of the cafes in the Dom
Plein—the square surrounding theCathedral. Our stroll continued in theafternoon—it was really too sunny to visit
inside the many museums we had looked
up on the Internet! Dinner on Friday
evening was a chance to meet up withwww.geo-web.org.uk

another ‘DX’ visitor to Utrecht—Luca
Bertagnolio from Brussels—and (in theory)
John Tellick and Francis Bell. As it
happened, we didn’t know where Francis
was staying, and though John tried hard to
get to the meal, he didn’t make it.
Sardinian food was Thursday’s choice.
At the meeting itself, after the short formal
business section was completed, many
people in the group gave informal reportson the status of their projects. These
included hardware projects like QFH
antennas and a novel 1.7 GHz dish feed,and software projects. Arne van Belle
described MSG-1 reception, processing
and animation using just a single 400 MHz
PC, albeit with some very careful
optimisation! John Tellick briefed us on thelatest from EUMETSAT, and Francis Bellspoke about the GEO group and its
progress so far. David Taylor describedsome of the newest data from EUMETCast– the Sea-Ice and Sea-Surface
temperature data. After lunch, there wasthe chance to chat informally to everyonein the group, and to demonstrate some of
the finer points of software which needed a
one-on-one discussion. There was RF
work on tuning the novel 1.7GHz feed.
After the meeting a group went out for an
informal dinner, choosing an Indian and Sri
Lankan restaurant from one of the many inthe “restaurant arc” of the Oudegracht.
Although the weather was not as good ason the days before, the rain held off
throughout the meal. Indeed, the major
hazard of dining so near the canal must be
the chance of falling in if one’s step is theleast unstable (so not too much to drink!).
Service was a little slow, but we all got
what we ordered in the end, including
various hot and cold sweets.
We spent the Sunday visiting Gouda – asmaller town than Utrecht but one showing
the influence of trading, windmills andcanals on the Dutch way of life. Having a
Dutchman (Arne van Belle) as our guide
was a valuable asset, and many thanks to
him for taking the time to show us round. I
don’t think we even talked about weather
satellites during the day!
Many thanks as well to the members of the
Werkgroep Kunstmanen for making us sowelcome, and allowing the intrusion of the
English language into their meeting.

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Canal-side Restaurants in Utrecht

Arne van Belle setting up his
35 cm dish for MSG reception

Arne van Belle demonstrating MSG-1 reception

View from Utrecht Cathedral Tower

David Taylor describing new
EUMETCast facilities

Receiving and processing MSG-1 on a 400 MHz PC

This delightful miniaturised
Meteosat-7 receiver was built
by Jaap Rusticus, one of theGroup’s members

View towards Utrecht Cathedral Tower

Testing a novel 1.7GHz dish feed
Some Werkgroep Kunstmanen
committee members

Francis Bell addressing themeeting on GEO’s behalfDavid Taylor demonstrating his software
www.geo-web.org.uk

Gouda Town Hall
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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

Robert Moore
Whitford Community Council in North Wales has
a quarterly journal, The Five Villages Chronicle.
For some years I have written a weather reportfor each season. These are based upon theobservations at my weather station in the village
of Carmel and are usually illustrated withsatellite data. The editor of The Five Villages
Chronicle tells me that the weather reports arewell received and of considerable interest to
readers. Here is the ‘Summer 2004’ report.
‘What summer?’ you might be tempted to ask. June andJuly were cooler than last year, but August was warmer,
and very much wetter. Grey skies and rain seemed tocharacterise August 2004—but it was a warm monthnevertheless. The ground temperature went up to thehighest I have recorded since 2000, 17.6°C on the 12th,
but it has been falling ever since and was 15.5°C at theend of the month.

Weather in the Five Villages Summer 2004
(2003 in brackets)
Temperatures (°C)

Total rainfall

Average

Maximum

Minimum

(mm)

June

16.0 (17. 5)

23.5 (25.2)

7.1 (8.5)

100.8 (40.6)

July

15.9 (18.4)

23.6 (30.5)

8.5 (10.6)

77.0 (99.5)

August17.3 (17.9)

26.7 (32.8)

9.5 (7.9)

157.5 (14.6)

Figure 1 - Depression - 09:00 UT, June 23, 2004

Our weather mainly comes to us across the Atlantic. At
the edge of the atmosphere, at altitudes of around 10 to 15
kilometres, there exist jet streams, whose presence wasconfirmed by high-flying aircraft during the Second World
War. These very strong winds act as conveyor belts thatcarry our weather from west to east. Depressions tend toform along the line of the jet stream but in the summer
months we are normally well to the south of the jetstream, enjoying high pressure and warm air from thesouth. This year we have remained firmly to the northand even right under the jet stream and therefore
subjected to a whole string of Atlantic depressions.

Image: Copyright © EUMETSAT 2004
Processing: David Taylor’s GeoSatsignal

Figure 1 shows an image received from the Meteosat-8
satellite at 09:00 on June 23 at the Carmel weather
station, showing the depression that brought 29.5 mm(over an inch) of rain to Carmel on that day. Figure 2 ispart of the Admiralty weather chart for 06:00 on the same
day—the isobars are close together and the depression isshown firmly centred over the UK. These are not the kindof pictures we expect to see in midsummer.
Summer 2003 was an exceptionally warm one and it has
generated a lot of discussion in the technical literature.
The August 2004 issue of the Royal MeteorologicalSociety’s journal Weather was a special issue devoted to
the 2003 heatwave and drought. I was glad to see that myPage 18

Figure 2 - The Admiralty weather chart for 06:00 UT on June 23

www.geo-web.org.uk

Image courtesy Fleet Weather and Oceanographic Centre

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

observations in Carmel tracked those shown in the charts
published in Weather. Although, by contrast, thissummer’s rainfall has been very high, temperatures arein line with 2000 and 2002, and in-between those for Juneand August 2001, (when June was hot and August cool)—remember? So this summer’s temperatures in Carmel
were not exceptional. It was last year that was out of line.
Taken all in all it has been a pretty average summer—i.e.
variable around the average temperatures, with alternate
sunshine and rain. If you include May in your summer, it
has not been at all bad.
But what about that rain? Low cloud, grey skies and rainseem to have been a feature of this summer but in fact the
total June/July summer rainfall was roughly similar toprevious years and virtually the same as 2000. 2003 wasthe exception again. Last year June and August weremuch drier than July This year June and July were
wetter than last year and August exceptionally so, withmore than ten times as much rain falling as in AugustNews from Brazil... continued from page 14
These winds and light precipitation have reached the Cityof Fortaleza causing slight damage within the city and abrief disruption of power supply in some areas.

GEO Quarterly No 4

2003. Nationally, summer was the wettest since 1956 andthe twelfth wettest since records began in 1766. When therain falls is, of course, vitally important also, and arable
farmers will not have welcomed so much rain in August,when they would have hoped to get in their harvest.
In August we had severe flooding events in Boscastle andLochearnhead: on radio and TV people asked if this was
because of global warming. Global warming and coolingare long-term cyclical changes; specific events inparticular places at particular times simply can not bedirectly attributed to these long-term changes. One of themain contributory factors in Cornwall was the confluenceof sea breezes from the north and south coasts over
Boscastle. I was watching the satellite imagery of the sea
breezes along the south coasts of England and Wales andlater the radar imagery of the rainfall (via the Internet).
No forecaster could have predicted exactly what wasgoing to happen. It was immediate and it was local
circumstances that created these two weather events, notglobal warming.

Therefore, imagery from meteorological satellites
presents a great practical utility for the professionals in
meteorology. Otherwise, amateurs not only can have agreat delight observing them but can obtain a highknowledge about the atmospheric behaviour and then to
venture to make good weather forecasts for the place
where they live and also for other regions of the world.

References
1. A Storm to Remember - Les Hamilton and Raul Fritz Teixeira,
GEO Q3, pages 20-22, August 2004.
2. Catarina hits Brazil, Met Office, UK
www.metoffice.com/sec2/sec2cyclone/catarina.html
3. Tropical Cyclones Images and Movies, Met Office, UK
www.met-office.gov.uk/sec2/sec2cyclone/tcimages/Misc/

Raul Fritz Teixeira has an informative website which you
can visit at:
www.geocities.com/raulfbt2003

Figure 8
A sequence of Meteosat-7 visible images from March 27, 2004
showing a gust front identified by clouds embedded into lines in theform of arcs.

Footprint for Atlantic Bird-3 C-band transmission (see page 7)

www.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

Les Hamilton
While preparing David Taylor’s NOAA-12 images for the
HRPT/APT comparison in GEO Quarterly 3, he and I enjoyedsome interesting discussions on the appearance of this satellite’ssummertime afternoon images. David pointed out that thechannel-2+4 composite NOAA-12 images produced by his
Satsignal software exhibited an attractive colour quality which
was quite distinct from images from the other current NOAA
satellites. The two colour images on this page illustrate thiscomparison. They were acquired within a few hours of each otheron June 25 this year, and the difference is significant. The
NOAA-17 pass, close to midday, produced a crisp image with good
contrast throughout. In its NOAA-12 counterpart from lateafternoon, when the sun’s elevation was much lower, land featuresin particular are clearly much more subdued.
Notwithstanding that differing lighting conditions throughout the
day must impact on the appearance of satellite images, there
exists a much more fundamental reason to anticipate differencesin quality between NOAA-12 and NOAAs -15 and -17. NOAA-12 isan extremely ancient weather satellite—it was launched in 1991:
indeed it is by far the longest-serving weather satellite currently
active. It was also the last NOAA spacecraft for which thetransmitted signal from the visible/near infrared image channel(channel-2), generally referred to as the ‘visible channel’, wasmodulated in direct proportion with the received reflectance fromthe terrain over which it flew.
Zero radiation was translated into zero signal modulation (fullblack on the resulting weather images) while 100% reflectancegave full modulation of the signal and produced the brightest
white tones. Intermediate reflectance values were mapped on to
proportionate shades of grey on the images. Unfortunately, while
this provided excellent tonal differentiation in regions of highreflectance (cloud, snow and ice), land in general and vegetatedterrain in particular were poorly discriminated in images fromthese earlier NOAA weather satellites.

Figure 1 - NOAA 12 at 16:06 UT on June 25, 2004

Dual-Slope Gain Transfer
Commencing with NOAA-15, launched in 1998, which carried amore advanced version of the imaging radiometer, a dual-slope
gain transfer characteristic was applied to the mapping between
received radiation and signal modulation (figure 3). Readers
wishing more details should visit:
http://www2.ncdc.noaa.gov/docs/klm/html/c7/sec7-1.htm#t7111-1

The zero and 100% radiation values are still modulated aspreviously, to the extremes of a notional scale of 1000 points. But
lower radiation intensities, in the range 0 to 25%, are mapped todigital values of 0...500 while intensities between 25% to 100% aremapped to values 501...1000. The effect is to provide increased
gain for low reflectances, such as are encountered over land andsea, thus increasing the accuracy with which measurements canbe made.
The Question
David concluded our discussion by posing this question: ‘Has
anyone noticed the change between NOAA-12 and NOAA-15? The
Page 20

www.geo-web.org.uk

Figure 2 - NOAA 17 at 11:27 UT on June 25, 2004

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Figure 4 -NOAA 11 on June 23, 1989 (left) comparedwith NOAA 17 on June 13, 2004

Figure 5 -NOAA 14 on June 1, 1997 (left) comparedwith NOAA 17 on June 16, 2003

NOAA-11 and NOAA-14. So it does seem conclusive thatthe dual-slope gain feature, implemented since NOAA-15,
results in an improvement in the quality of channel-2
imagery from the NOAA satellites.

Figure 3
Illustration of single- and dual-slope gain transfer

ground areas should appear brighter in the APT signal,
which should result in images that are more noise-free. Of
course, that would only apply when the lighting conditions
were the same (i.e. at the same local solar time) so you may
not be able to compare NOAA-12 and NOAA-17’.
The Challenge
The two colour-composite images opposite certainly show
the NOAA-17 image to be brighter and crisper than thatfrom NOAA-12. Taken on the same day, the former was
acquired very close to noon and the latter four hours pastnoon. The comparison is clearly flawed because of thistime differential. What is required is a comparison
between NOAA-17 and an old-style NOAA satellite undersimilar illumination conditions.
A trawl through the archives turned up a number of
equivalent transmissions, all received within two hours ofnoon during the month of June when solar illumination isat its strongest and illumination levels should be very
similar. Figure 4 compares a NOAA-11 pass from 1989,
the satellite’s first summer aloft, with a NOAA-17 passdating from June 13 this year. Figure 5 shows a NOAA-14
pass from 1997 showing Great Britain free of cloud and asimilar NOAA-17 image obtained during that memorable
sunny summer of 2003.
All four images are from channel-2 APT and were
processed using Satsignal, with histogram equalisationand gamma correction switched off. While the cloud
characteristics of the images are similar in their range of
tones, it is obvious that the land rendition in those fromNOAA-17 is considerably brighter than those from

Rebirth and Orbit Precession
During NOAA-12’s lifetime, a succession of afternoon APT
satellites has come and gone. The APT aboard NOAAs-11, -13, -14 and -16 has ceased for a variety of reasons,leaving us without a ‘true’ afternoon APT satellite sincelate 2000. But, because of a phenomenon known as orbital
precession, NOAA-12 has now come close to filling thatvoid.
NOAA-12 was launched as a morning
satellite. As such, it made its near-overheadsouthbound pass close to 8.30 am local time,over the illuminated hemisphere of the
Earth, and provided well illuminated visible
light images during the summer months.
The ascending evening passes took placearound 18.30 hours local time, but over the
Earth’s night-time hemisphere, where there
was insufficient illumination to produce
good visible light images This situation is
illustrated by the upper drawing at right.
As the years have passed by, perturbation
effects caused by the Earth’s atmosphere,
the moon and the sun have conspired torotate the plane of NOAA-12’s orbit withrespect to the sun—the phenomenon called
precession. These days, overhead passes
occur some three hours earlier thanformerly, with the descending morning passat around 05:30 am and the ascending one at
15:30 hours in the afternoon. Consequently
it is now the northbound afternoon pass thatwww.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

traverses Earth’s illuminated hemisphere andwhich provides the better visible light imagery(see the lower drawing at the foot of page 21).
Both views are taken from above the plane ofEarth’s orbit around the sun and very
approximately over the north pole. The rotationof Earth about its axis is anticlockwise in theseviews.
Conclusion
Following many years of orbital precession,
visible light images from NOAA-12’s morning
orbit are no longer usable, even in midsummer
when solar illumination is at its strongest. But
by the same token the satellite’s evening orbit
has precessed into mid afternoon where it is now
producing more than acceptable visible lightimages. Figure 6 shows a welcome sunnyinterlude in Great Britain's dull and damp
summer. Note the rather attractive sun-glint
reflecting from the waters of the Bay of Biscay
Some Personal Thoughts
NOAA 12 holds a special affection in my memory as
it was the first American weather satellite actually to
be launched following my introduction to APT satellite
imaging. My fascination with these weather satellites
started in the spring of 1988 when the physics
department at the academy where I taught acquired
an early APT receiver, complete with an interface for
the BBC microcomputer. In those days the active APT
satellites were NOAAs-9 and -10, plus a successionof relatively short-lived and somewhat unreliable
Russian Meteor satellites.
The satellite images produced using this equipment,
albeit in just 16 shades of grey, proved utterly
captivating and I resolved to set up my own groundstation with minimum delay. This became a reality
soon after the launch of NOAA 11 that September,and what an introduction to satellite imaging thatproved to be! My very first NOAA-11 pass, on
October 1, featured a major Atlantic storm, dubbed‘hurricane Helene’ after the Atlantic hurricane whose
dying remnants it was.

Figure 6 - NOAA 12 channel-2 image from the 15:36 UT pass on August 14, 2004

Obtaining this image was a real stroke of luck as I had
just completed setting up my new hardware, including
a dedicated tape-deck for recording. I switched on
and immediately heard the NOAA-11 signal, strong
and clear, through my speaker. Being so unprepared,
almost half the satellite pass was already over, but
the Atlantic storm, along with much of England andthe Low Countries, was captured on tape for posterity.
By playing the tape through my PC soundcard I wasable to create a wave file and subsequently decode it
using Satsignal. The result can be seen in figure 7.
But May 14, 1991 was the day of days as far as I wasconcerned. This was when a completely new NOAA
satellite, NOAA-D, took to the skies, where, oncesafely in orbit, it became NOAA-12. At the time of its
launch, the anticipated lifetime of the spacecraft wasstated as ‘not less than two years’. This has proved tobe hugely pessimistic. NOAA-12 continues to operate
after providing well over a decade of fascinating
weather imagery—long may it continue to do so!

Page 22

Figure 7 - Remnants of hurricane ‘Helene’ - NOAA 11 on October 1, 1988
www.geo-web.org.uk

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Peter Wakelin
The SLV-3 and the more advanced ASLV wereexperimental launch vehicles and the experience gainedin their development, construction and launch led to the
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The first launchattempt was in 1993 and PSLV soon proved to be areliable, low-cost means of putting a significant payload
into an 800-plus km sun-synchronous orbit. It has becomethe ‘workhorse’ of the Indian space programme.
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle
The 44 metre tall PSLV is a four-stage
vehicle using solid and liquid propulsion
systemsalternately.
The
138 tonnes of HTPB (hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene) in the first stage
make it one of the largest solid-propellant boosters in the world, capable ofdeveloping a thrust of 3,500 kN at sea
level. In addition, six strap-on boosters(derived from the earlier ASLV’s firststage), each with a thrust of 440 kN,
augment the first stage’s thrust.
The second stage employs the Vikas
engine which is built in India underlicense from a French company. It carries 40 tonnes of the liquid propellant
UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethyl
hydrazine) as fuel and nitrogen tetroxide as oxidiser and delivers a thrust of
724 kN.
Stage three uses 7 tonnes of HTPB castin a Kevlar epoxy fibre case andgenerates a thrust of 324 kN. The
fourth stage comprises two liquidfuelled engines each utilising two
tonnes of monomethyl hydrazine The PSLV Launch
Vehicle(MMH) fuel and mixed oxides ofnitrogen as oxidiser. Each of thesegenerates a thrust of up to 7.4 kN to accelerate thepayload to orbital velocity.
PSLV incorporates a complex flight control system and an
inertial navigation system (installed near the top of the
fourth stage) which guides the vehicle from lift-off tospacecraft injection into orbit. A large number of stage
auxiliary systems are incorporated for stage separation,
heat shield separation and ejection etc.
The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram,
designed and developed the PSLV. The inertial systems
for the vehicle were developed by the ISRO Inertia
Systems Unit and the liquid-propelled second and fourthstages were developed at the Liquid Propulsion System
Centre, both of which are also located at
Thiruvananthapuram. All launches take place from theranges at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at
Shiharikota, 100 km north of Chennai (Madras).
The Launch Sequence
In theory, and in the absence of an atmosphere, the fuelefficient way to launch a satellite would be to use
maximum acceleration immediately after liftoff but, inpractice, the launch profile is quite different. The lower
atmosphere is dense and often very turbulent so, tominimise frictional heating and dynamic stresses on thevehicle and payload, a carefully controlled and complex
launch sequence has to be followed. A typical launch
profile for PSLV lifting a 1 000 kg payload into a sunsynchronous orbit might be as follows:• Liftoff occurs after stage 1 and two of the strapon boosters are ignited• 30 seconds later at a height of 3 000m, theremaining four boosters are ignited• The first two boosters burn out after 54 seconds(at 17 km) and fall away 19 s later• The other four boosters burn until 79 s after
launch (at 36 km) and then drop away
• Stage 1 burns out, drops off and stage 2 ignites
105 s after launch (at 48 km)• Now well above the dense atmosphere, thepayload’s protective fairing is jettisoned after
152 s (at 105 km)• After 260 s stage 2 is exhausted, drops away,
and stage 3 is ignited at about 232 km altitude• Stage 3 burns for about 70 s taking the vehicle to400 km• After coasting on a ballistic trajectory for afurther 570 s to 700 km altitude, stage 4 ignites
for about 7 minutes to reach orbital velocity
The PSLV Development Flights
The first three launches, D1, D2 and D3 were designateddevelopmental flights to test the systems and all carried
Indian-built satellites in the IRS (Indian Remote Sensing)series.
PSLV-D1 was launched on September 20, 1993 carrying
IRS 1E but was unsuccessful because of a software error
in the guidance and control system. The other two weresuccessfully launched in 1994 and 1996 and carried themore advanced IRS P2 and IRS P3 payloads respectively.
The latter carried an X-ray astronomy payload as well as
two remote sensing packages for vegetation and oceanic
studies.
PSLV Matures
The first ‘commercial’ flight, PSLV-C1, took place on
September 29, 1997 and placed IRS 1D into a very precise
orbit. As well as carrying a LISS camera (described inpart two), the payload also included a steerable PAN
camera which scans a swath of 70 km at the nadir with awww.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

resolution of 5.8 m. It can tilt to scan off-track and also
provide stereo pairs. Also included is WiFS, a wide-field,
multispectral imager with a resolution of 188 m over an
810 km swath.
The next launch, on May 26, 1999, marked a milestone inthat it was the first Indian launch to place three payloads
into space. PSLV-C2’s primary payload was IRS P4 (alsoknown as Oceansat) but the 107 kg Korean KITSAT-3 andthe 45 kg German DLR-TUBSAT were also orbited.
Oceansat carries the Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) and a
Multifrequency Scanning Microwave Radiometer(MSMR). OCM operates in eight spectral bands and gathers data on chlorophyll concentration, phytoplankton
blooms and suspended sediments.
PSLV-C3 also placed three satellites into orbit; a total ofalmost 1 300 kg went into 600 km sun-synchronous orbits
on October 22, 2001. The primary payload was the Indiabuilt TES (Technology Experiment Satellite). The Belgian
PROBA (Project for On Board Autonomy) and German
BIRD (Bispectral and Infrared Remote Detection) were
the secondary payloads.
Enhanced Capability of the PSLV
Improved performance from the third stage solid
propellant motor was obtained by modifying the casing
design and propellant loading. Also, the capacity of the
fourth stage fuel tanks was increased which, together
with the replacement of the metallic payload adaptor witha carbon composite one, resulted in a substantial payload
advantage. PSLV could now place over two tonnes into asun-synchronous orbit.

Resourcesat 1

This improved capability was put to a different use in thenext launch; PSLV-C4 was launched eastwards andcarried the 1 060 kg Metsat to a 250 x 36 000 km
geostationary transfer orbit inclined at 18 degrees to theequator on September 12, 2002. Metsat’s onboard motor
circularised the orbit and reduced the inclination to nearzero, making it India’s first launch to geostationary orbit.
In a solemn occasion at Parliament House on February 5,
2003, Indian Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee
renamed Metsat Kalpana 1 in memory of Dr Kalpana
Chawla, the Indian-born American astronaut killed in the
Columbia shuttle accident.
The most recent launch, that of PSLV-C5 on October 17
2003, placed Resourcesat 1 in an 817 km circular sunsynchronous orbit. Not only does the 1 360 kg
Resourcesat 1 continue the remote sensing data services
provided by IRS 1C and IRS 1D, both of which haveoperated well beyond their designed lifetimes, but also
vastly enhances the data quality with its enhanced
sensors. The spacecraft also carries a 120 gigabit solidstate recorder permitting global coverage.
Page 24

Kalpana-1 visible image - 06:00 UT, March 26, 2003

Kalpana 1
Kalpana 1 is the first exclusively meteorological satellite
built by ISRO and is the precursor to the future INSAT(Indian National Satellite) system that will have separate
satellites for meteorology and telecommunications
services. This will enable large capacity to be built into
INSAT spacecraft, both in terms of transponders andtheir radiated power without the design constraints
imposed by meteorological instruments.
Kalpana 1 is located above 74 degrees east longitude andis a 3-axis stabilised platform carrying a 1-km resolution
CCD camera imaging in three bands as well as a highresolution scanning radiometer with about 4-km
resolution in the near and thermal IR bands. Imagery istransmitted to numerous receiving stations along withconventional meteorological data and facsimile charts
through the Meteorological Data Distribution (MDD)system on Kalpana 1. Also on board is a data relaytransponder which automatically collects readings from
more than 300 unattended meteorological stations
throughout India and sends them to the Meteorological
Data Utilisation Centre at New Delhi.
Although PSLV is capable of putting a 1 000 kg payload
into a geostationary transfer orbit, a more powerfulvehicle has been developed to take heavy communications
payloads to the geostationary orbit. The GSLV
(Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle) will be thesubject of part 4.
Acknowledgements.
I am indebted to ISRO and the National Remote Sensing
Agency for making so much information available on theirwebsites:www.geo-web.org.uk

http://www.isro.org
http://www.nrsa.gov.in

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Ton Lindemann (Meteo Maarssen, NL)
The use of Bracknell synoptic charts as overlays on
weather satellite images can cause problems because of
Crown Copyright should you wish to publish these on
your web pages. But there is now an alternative. The
latest version of Digital Atmosphere WorkStation(DAWS), released in July 2004, supports fleetcode.
Fleetcode is provided by the UK Met Office and comes freefrom copyright restrictions. This article explains how
fleetcode data can be superimposed over your Meteosat
weather images.
Fleetcode
Fleetcode or IAC (International Analysis Code) is amethod of providing detailed weather maps in a compact,
encoded format. Files are very small—typically no morethan three kilobytes—and in ASCII format. The namefleetcode derives from its major use, by offshore shipping.
Developed after World War II when fax and the Internet
weren’t available, and there was a need for good weather
maps for navigation on the open sea, fleetcode wasbroadcast by radio stations. Each fleetcode file contains,in coded format, a complete surface weather map,complete with the positions of highs, lows, troughs, allkind of fronts, isobars and more. For a long time this was
the most efficient way to receive weather maps onboard
ships. The forecaster then had to manually plot all thecodes on to a weather map, draw in the lines and voila! He
got his surface weather map.
In those days fleetcode was available for almost allimportant shipping routes and dangerous cyclone areas.
But with the coming of fax and the Internet, fleetcode
became less important as complete weather maps could bebroadcast by fax (radiotransmitted) and by satellite
systems. Almost all offshore weather services ceased
broadcasting fleetcode. But the UK Met Office is offering
fleetcode for the North Atlantic and Europe and the files
are available on a Swiss yachting site. The US is offering
its own dialect of fleetcode, but showing only the positionsof highs, lows and fronts and in a different format.
Both forms of fleetcode are available on the Web and bothcan be used in Digital Atmosphere WorkStation. In thisarticle, we will look only at the official fleetcodes from the
UK Met Office.
Software Requirements
To create your own surface charts from fleetcode files you
require:• GeoSatsignal4• Digital Atmosphere Workstation v 1.1• a source of Meteosat images• a fleetcode analysis (or forecast) file
Setting up Digital Atmosphere
It is necessary to customise some of the overlay colour

Figure 1 - Creating the base map in Digital Atmospheresettings because the default black lines are hard to see
when placed over false colour Meteosat images. Open
Digital Atmosphere, click on <File → Preferences> thenselect the ‘Styles’ tab. We are going to change the colours
for troughs and isobars to green and yellow respectively.
Scroll down the list and search the ‘Parameter’ column for‘Troughs’. Click on its default colour in the ‘Colour’column to open the colour picker: select green then click‘OK’. Scroll down to the next item, ‘General
isopleths/labels’ and change it into yellow in the sameway. Click the ‘Save changes’ button, then ‘OK’ to exit.
The fleetcode charts relate to a specific region which
includes the north Atlantic Ocean and western Europe.
Select <Map → Generate base map...>, enter theparameters shown in figure 1 then click ‘OK’. Use<Map → Save base map...> to save it as ‘N-Atl_Eur_vis’. I
have a special folder for Digital Atmosphere maps. Take alook into the folder where your map is saved: there should
be a file named ‘N-Atl_Eur_vis.dmf’. This is the setup filefor the visual Meteosat images. Don’t remove this file.
Creating a Meteosat Image in GeoSatsignal
We must set up GeoSatSignal to create a remappedsatellite image that exactly matches the base map createdin Digital Atmosphere. First, create a new job using theparameters shown in figure 2. Be sure to use all the‘Remapping’ settings shown on the right hand panel of

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More examples (IR and VIS) of these charts are publisheddaily on my website (in Dutch):www.meteo-maarssen.nl/achtergrond/
satelliet/satellietfoto.htm
There is an option to download fleetcode files directly fromwithin Digital Atmosphere but at the time of writing thisis not yet operational. For the present you can download
the fleetcode files manually from:http://ftp.hb-yacht.ch/

You will find that there are two kinds of file available, the
ASXX series (analysis) and the FSXX series (forecast).
The format of the files is ASXX21.ddhhmm and
FSXX21.ddhhmm with ‘ddhhmm’ indicating the relevant
date and time (UTC — dd - day; hh - hour; mm -minute)

Figure 2 - Creating the job setup in GeoSatsignal4

The files are issued at six-hourly intervals, commencing
with 00:00 UTC each day and become available around
5 hours after the synoptic main hour. There is a one
month archive. Both types of file are accepted by Digital
Atmosphere

this tab. Save the job as ‘N-Atl_Eur_vis’. Using this job,load a set of Meteosat-6, -7 or -8 images. After processing,a false-colour remapped image, exactly matching theregion covered by the Digital Atmosphere base map, willappear in the ‘Remapped’ tab. Save this image to asuitable folder.

The ASXX series are the current surface analyses while
the FSXX are the forecast files. Keep in mind that each
forecast file relates to 24 hours ahead of the date and timeof issue (so you must add 24 hours to the forecast date andtime in the filename. For example, FSXX21.221200,
issued on the 22nd of the month contains the 12:00
forecast for the 23rd of the month).

Adding a Fleetcode Overlay to a Satellite Images
Open Digital Atmosphere (using the ‘N-Atl_Eur_vis.dmf’base map) and open <Map → Import map> to load theimage you just created with GeoSatsignal. If a warning
message appears, just click ‘OK’. The Meteosat image
should now be displayed in Digital Atmosphere.
The next part of the story is easy. Download somefleetcode data files into the Digital Atmosphere ‘Data’
folder then click on ‘Import file’ in the <File> menu andload a fleetcode file. Click on <Data → Fleetcode → All
annotations> and you’re ready with an image like theupper illustration on the inside front cover.

Subject to the successful launch and commissioning of
MSG-2 (Meteosat-9), EUMETSAT will terminate theMeteosat-7 WEFAX and HRI services from 0° in
December 2005. These will have been replaced by the new
MSG services delivered via EUMETCast.
Users currently operating Secondary Data User
Stations (SDUS) should have migrated to MSG data
via EUMETCast by this time.
The production of meteorological products from the first
generation of Meteosat satellite data at 0º will also end.
The service will continue using MSG satellite data andwill be disseminated via the Global Telecommunications
System (GTS) and EUMETCast.
Page 26

References
GeoSatSignal is produced by Satsignal Software atwww.satsignal.net ==> Satellite Tools

Registration costs £49.95
Digital Atmosphere Workstation is produced by Weather
Graphics at:
http/::weathergraphics.com

Registration costs $89 for new users. If you are already aregistered user, the upgrade fee is $68.

EUMETSAT plans to continue the Indian Ocean Data
Coverage (IODC) service until the end of 2008 withMeteosat-7 taking over from the Meteosat-5 satellite at
63º East. The IODC service will continue to be madeavailable to users via both EUMETCast and direct
dissemination from the satellite providing the IODC
service.
It is planned to continue the Rapid Scanning service
provided by Meteosat-6 for some time beyond 2005.
The satellite will remain at its current position at 10ºE.
Delivery of this service will be via EUMETCast and FTP
over the Internet.

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GEO Quarterly No 4

Peter J Bradley
Introduction
I was interested to read Francis Bell’s feature on the‘Snows of Kilimanjaro’ in the Launch issue of GEO andthe implications therein. I was living in East Africa in thefifties and sixties and, in my student days, I walked up a
number of the East African mountains, usually with asmall group of friends, and took many photos on thevarious expeditions. Francis Bell’s article ‘sparked off’ thepossibility of finding more recent photos which might becompared with those taken some forty years ago to givevisual dimension to the proven fact that the tropical ice inAfrica is disappearing. My formal studies (physics andgeology) took me into some of the geology and glaciationof East Africa, and included elements of meteorology and

Figure 1 -climatology. These connections seemed to give reasonablegrounds for writing an article in response to Francis Bell’schallenge. This article is written to give background to
the situation and definitely not as a definitive monographand, be there any, I apologise for inaccuracies in recall!
Geology and Glaciation
The geology and glaciation of East Africa’s mountains
provide a good starting point, though I emphasise that thegeology of the area is fascinating and very complex: tosimplify it as I have attempted to do is certain to do it
injustice. For readers unfamiliar with the area it might beuseful to look at figure 1, which shows East Africa withtext overlay for positional referencing of the mountains

A segment from the Meteosat-8 06:00 UT transmission on May 19, 2004, covering
east Africa and showing the four mountain summits described in the text.
Image: © EUMETSAT 2004
Processing: David Taylor’s software.
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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observationand lakes. This particular image was selected as it isrelatively rare for all four of the mountain summits toappear free from cloud at the same time, though thefoothills of Kilimanjaro are in cloud on this one.
Three of the four mountains to which I will refer are of
volcanic origin, namely, the group of three called
Kilimanjaro (Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira plateau), with
Mount Kenya and Mount Elgon. The exception to thegroup is the Ruwenzori range which is a horst, amountain range which has been formed by the uplifting or
upthrusting of part of the landscape, and which formed at
the same time as Africa’s Great Rift Valley.
To simplify the picture, therefore, visualise a very old flat
landscape—a peneplain of Archaean and Precambrianbasement rock more than 600 million years old—that
suddenly fractured with sideways pressure producing
uplift to form the Ruwenzori while another part wasforced apart and subsequently collapsed to form the Rift
Valley. At the same time, volcanic activity was occurringin adjacent regions where the landscape was weakened,
resulting in the many volcanic mountains, including thosementioned above. All of these mountains have had ice
fields and glaciers at some stage during the last 300,000
years. The question is: ‘How long has glacial change been
going on and for how long will the remaining ice last?’
Geological studies suggest that the maximum glaciationin this region occurred between the lower and middle
Pleistocene period. Studies show there have been periodsof stability and retreat of the ice and arid (dry) and pluvial(rainy) periods. Very recent research by Professor Lonnie
G Thompson and his team (2002) has shown, through theexamination of cores from the ice fields of Kilimanjaro,that there have been three fairly abrupt climate changes
during the past 11,000 years or so. So this is not the firsttime that the ice fields have been affected in geologicalhistory, but it is certainly the first to have been caused by
mankind! I shall attempt to give a brief description ofthese four mountains and of their glacial history since
they were ‘officially’ surveyed.
Observations of the lowest point to which ice descended
were recorded on the Ruwenzori range at an altitude ofapproximately 2000 m. This has been determined by the
position and altitude of terminal moraines, walls of rockdebris that the glaciers dumped at the end of theirtravels. These moraines consist of material scoured fromthe bedrock and carried down the slopes with the flowing
ice before the glaciers retreated, leaving U-shaped valleys
and dams of rock behind which glacial lakes or tarns often
form. The moraines on Mount Kenya suggest 3000 m as
the lowest the ice descended. Mount Elgon only had
permanent ice around the caldera and in several marginal
glaciers down to 3400 m. In recent times, the past century
or so has seen the most rapid ice melt and glacial retreat
in the East African ice fields
It is perhaps worth mentioning here that, when photos
are taken of these mountains (and particularly of
Kilimanjaro), a daily or seasonal change in the snow line
may be evident. This is very different from the longer
term changes which have been observed over many years.
Some photos, for example, taken early in the day, may
show snow falls which disappear completely during thecourse of the same day but give the impression that there
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is more average ice/snow than is truly the case. Compare
figure 2 with older photos and more recent ones later in
the article.
Kilimanjaro - ‘The Shining Mountain’
Perhaps the most impressive of the East African
mountains is the highest of the Kilimanjaro group, Kibo,
though all of these mountains are impressive in their own
ways. The white snow- and ice-capped volcanic peak of
Kibo (5895 m), lying just three degrees south of theequator, has been the inspiration of many stories, articles
and films. Anyone who has seen it from the Kenyan
plains, in the clear, at dawn, when the sun turns it pink,
will not easily forget it. The mountain looks very majestic.
Kilimanjaro, as a mountain group, has six or sevendistinct vegetation zones from the plains at 1200 m to thesaddle between Kibo and Mawenzi (both Mt Kenya andMount Elgon have similar zones. The Ruwenzori has amuch more Alpine type of vegetation and all have someplant species unique to their respective regions).
Kibo, whose summit is now called Uhuru Point/Peak, wasoriginally named Kaiser Wilhelm Spitze by Dr Hans
Meyer, a professor of colonial geography, originally from
Leipzig, Germany. He was, in 1889, the first European toreach the summit with a colleague Ludwig Purtscheller.
At that time, Tanganyika—now Tanzania—was part ofGerman East Africa. Figure 3 shows clearly the ice fieldon the rim of the Kilimanjaro/Kibo taken from the Kenyaside on the Nalemoro Route in August 1961. A few friends
and I were relaxing for a couple of days to acclimatise ataround 3900 m when this was taken.
Kibo is the youngest and highest mountain in the
45-50 km wide chain of three Kilimanjaro volcanoes
which stretches for some 80 km from northwest to
southeast along the Tanzanian side of the KenyaTanzania border and to the east of the Great Rift Valley.
Kibo is dormant and was probably formed in the lower
Pleistocene period (roughly 750,000 years ago).
Mount Mawenzi (5151 m), the second highest of thegroup, lying to the southeast of Kibo, is the eroded plug ofan extinct volcano which was formed about the same timeas Mount Kenya (2.6-3.1 million years ago), during the
Pliocene period (between 12 million and 1 million years
ago).

Figure 4 - Aerial view of Mawenzi, Kibo and Shira - March 1988

Finally, lying to the northwest of Kibo, comes the Shira
Plateau (3962 m), the oldest of the trio of volcanoes, which
has completely eroded away leaving, as its name suggests,
a plateau above the plains into which the volcanoes wereoriginally intruded. Figure 4 is an aerial photo of theKilimanjaro group which I took from the Kenya side inMarch 1988. The jagged mountain on the left is Mawenzi,
the central mountain of Kilimanjaro is Kibo, and the

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GEO Quarterly No 4

Figure 2 - Kilimanjaro: cloud and snow on crater rim - January 2004

Figure 3 - Kilimanjaro with a group of friends - August 1961

Photo by kind permission of Dr Hartmut Bielefeldt

Photo: P J Bradley

Figure 5a - The Furtwangler glacier, August 1961

Figure 5b - The Furtwangler glacier, January 2004

Photo: P J Bradley

Photo by kind permission of Dr Hartmut Bielefeldt

Figure 6a - Kibo, February 1993

Figure 6b - Kibo, February 2000

Image: NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center/USGS

Image: NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center/USGS

Figure 7a - The eastern icefield of Kibo, August 1961

Figure 7b - The eastern icefield of Kibo, January 2004

Photo: P J Bradley

Photo: Dr Hartmut Bielefeldt

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

Shira plateau is visible on the right. Another volcano,Mount Meru (4565 m), which is hidden behind
Kilimanjaro, is just visible in figure 1 (to the south of
Kilimanjaro). Meru is yet another impressive dormant
volcano and is situated well inside Tanzania but is too
low to have any permanent ice.
Kilimanjaro is the highest of the freestanding volcanoes
in the world with its base at approximately 1000 m above
sea level. There are a number of ice fields and glaciers on
Kibo, often named after German explorers andmissionaries (the white patch seen on the summit of Kibo
in figure 1 is ice). My own photograph taken in August
1961 (figure 5a), and a second taken by Dr Hartmut
Bielefeldt on his January 2004 expedition (figure 5b)
show the Furtwangler glacier within the crater rim. Notethat the ice field on the crater rim at the top of the first
photo shows castle-like ice blocks which overhang part of
the rim, but these have disappeared in the second photowhere the ice field is much reduced. According toProfessor Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, theFurtwangler Glacier seen in the photos as flowing
through the breach in the crater rim had suffered a
reduction to half its original area between 1974 and 2000.
The two images from NASA’s Landsat satellites taken in
February 17, 1993 (figure 6a) and February 21, 2000
(figure 6b) respectively, show an interesting comparisonin the ice around the crater rim. The eastern andnorthern ice fields were originally joined (figures 3, 8a)but now there is a considerable gap between them.
Figure 7a shows the eastern part of the ice field as it
appeared in August 1961 while figure 7b, taken from aslightly different position on the crater rim by Dr
Hartmut Bielefeldt in January 2004 illustrates what
remains today! The two evening photos taken fromapproximately the same point on the mountain, 43 years
apart, show the visible reduction in ice. They were taken
near the third caves on the Nalemoru Route, mine inAugust 1961 (figure 8a) and Dr Bielefeldt’s in January
2004 (figure 8b).
An early morning photo taken standing on ice near
Gilman’s Point at approx 5685 m on the rim of Kibo in
August 1961 (figure 9) shows that the flat section of ice is
no longer there and the ice cliff is significantly reduced.
Incidentally, it is reported that when the atmosphere isvery clear, it is possible to see Mount Kenya due northfrom Kibo, a distance of 350 kilometres. Both peaks are
sufficiently high for the Earth’s curvature not to effect theline of vision and certainly both can be easily seen from anaircraft flying approximately equidistant between the
two. It probably represents the longest view in the world.
Some of the statistics that relate to ice loss are
staggering. Again, Professor Thompson points out thatapproximately 82% of the ice had been lost over a periodof 88 years since the first surveys were carried out in
1912. Approximately one third of the ice had disappeared
between 1989 and 2001, and since I climbed the mountainin 1961 approximately 45% of the ice has disappeared
from the summit. At the present rate of desiccation (bysublimation) and melting, extrapolation indicates thatlittle if any of the remaining ice cap on Kilimanjaro/Kibo
will remain in 15 to 20 years from now!

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November/December

Mt. Kenya - ‘Mountain of Light’.
Mount Kenya (5199 m) lies a mere 0.1° south of theequator (figure 10). The first ‘official’ records were started
in the late 19th century and eighteen glaciers wererecorded in 1893. The first European to climb Batian, thehigher of the two summits—the other being Nelion—of
Mount Kenya (known locally as Kirinyaga), was Sir
Halford Mackinder, accompanied by Cesar Ollier andJoseph Brocherel in 1899. In 1903 Mackinder reported on
fifteen glaciers and at that time they descended to an
altitude of 4475 metres. By 1946, five of these glaciers
had disappeared and at present those remaining are
retreating as rapidly as those on Kilimanjaro. There was
speculation at that time, for whatever reason, that the ice
fields of the East African mountains might disappear
within a century or so. It was a controversial notion thenbut was not related to the profligate fuel consumption
activities of the human race ! At present, apparently, only
seven of the originally recorded eighteen glaciers exist.
The Ruwenzori Range - ‘Mountains of the Moon’
The Ruwenzori Range, which includes no less that 25
peaks above 4500 m, is topped by Margherita (5109 m)
and Alexandra (5091 m), the twin summits of Mount
Stanley. These mountains lie approximately 0.4° north ofthe equator on the Uganda side of the Uganda-Congoborder, between Lake Albert to the northeast (throughwhich the Nile flows) and Lake Edward to the southwest(see figure 1).
The first Europeans to climb Margherita were the Duke ofAbruzi, along with Petigax, Ollier and Brocherel in 1906.
The latter two also accompanied Mackinder on Mt. Kenya
in 1899. The Ruwenzoris have six glacial complexes withover forty glaciers, the largest of which is on the Stanley
plateau: in fact this is the largest glacier in Africa and it
likewise is reported to be shrinking rapidly.
It is most likely that the Ruwenzori glaciers will be thelast of those in the African tropics to disappear because
these peaks are the wettest by far of the East African
mountains. The prevailing winds are predominantly
southeasterly or slightly northeasterly depending on theseason and the moisture carried in them, partly from
Lake Victoria, contributes significantly to the mountains’very damp climate. Although there are two wet seasonsfor this area, March to May and August to November, itrains almost daily regardless! Having watched the PDUS
images of East Africa for a number of years and more
recently those from Meteosat-8, the Ruwenzoris are seen
to be nearly always shrouded in cloud, whereas Kibo more
often has its summit above the clouds and is subject tomore desiccation and melt as a result.
This desiccation (drying out) is the loss of volume material
through sublimation owing to ‘evaporation’ directly fromthe solid to the gaseous state without going through theliquid phase, i.e. ice to water vapour.
Mt. Elgon - ‘Mountain of Mysteries’
Mount Elgon, summit Wagagai (4321 m), lies 1.1° northof the equator on the Uganda side of the Kenya-Uganda
border and is the lowest of the main East African
mountains. Despite this, Elgon has the largest base of any
freestanding volcano in the world with a diameter of some85-90 km and an average slope of no greater than three tofive degrees (figure 11).

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Elgon is reportedly the oldest of these mountains though
there has been controversy over its age. Estimates for its
formation range from 24 million years ago (during theearly Miocene period) to approximately 8 million years
ago (mid Pliocene). It has also been suggested that Elgon
was once much higher than it is at present as its crater,or more correctly caldera, is also very large, some eight bynine kilometres. The argument is that it could once havesupported a much larger cone and that at some stage themain vent became blocked resulting in the mountainblowing its top off, much like Mount St Helens in 1980.
Elgon has no permanent ice now, though historically it
had ice inside the caldera and around the margins of thecaldera rim. Figure 12 shows a view from the edge looking
into the caldera where the surface temperature canchange several tens of degrees in just a few minutes fromfull sun to the very cold misty conditions. The vegetationin the large sunken area is hardy: putting up with thediurnal temperature range has required a degree ofadaptation. Until the early 1960s, Mount Elgon did
experience some seasonal snow falls on the summit andthese were observable from the base of the mountain.
Nowadays, any snow is scarce, is usually limited to a
dusting in and around the caldera, and only very rarely is
any observable from the mountain’s base.

Figure 12 - Mount Elgon, looking into the caldera (1958)
Photo: P J BradleyAn aside. I had walked up Mt. Elgon a number of times
and on more than one occasion had been able to see Lake
Victoria from the summit on a clear day. This is a longview of some 100-120 km and is most spectacular, but not
as long as that from Kilimanjaro to Mount Kenya. Also,
approximately 20 km from where I used to live on Mount
Elgon, are the famous Kitum caves, where elephants andbuffalo venture deep into the caves—a distance of 165 m
or so—at night to lick salt minerals from the walls andthe ceiling.
Additional Notes and Comments.
In the late fifties and early sixties, usually with a groupof like-minded people, I climbed Kilimanjaro and several
other East African mountains in the days when it wasnecessary to carry all your own gear and when there were
no guides! As Francis Bell pointed out, Kilimanjaro, likemost mountains, needs to be approached with respect.
Several people die every year attempting to climb Kibo,
either from altitude sickness related problems or someother mishap. The authorities are particularly
unimpressed with ‘go-it-aloners’ these days, however well

GEO Quarterly No 4organised: it gives the tourism industry a bad name when
there are accidents. Apparently less that 40% of the
25,000 or so people who attempt to climb Kilimanjaro
every year succeed; the remainder fail owing primarily toaltitude sickness. The screes are particularly dangerous
on decent as most people retreat from the mountainduring the daylight hours when the ice which binds thescree together at night has melted. There is a tendency towant to run down the scree, a very hazardous pursuit.
There are some serious ascents, on both ice and rock, forthe experienced climber but, because the rock is of poor
quality, Mawenzi (figure 13) does need a deal of skill for
its ascent, as does Mount Kenya. This photo shows clearly
the screes that have developed between the ridges andvalleys as a result of erosion, the primary cause of whichis the daily freeze-melt cycle on the rock surface. Most of
the mountains of East Africa with summits above
approximately 3000 m suffer from this significant daynight change in temperature. Diurnal change is thedifference between the minimum night time temperatureand the maximum day time temperature. The constantchange from well below freezing to significantly above
freezing contributes to the break-up of the rock surface
and produces rapid erosion of the mountain. Water getsright into the rock vesicles and freezes, forcing thestructure to weaken and crack; the sun’s heat expands theouter surface of the rock forcing it break away from thesubsurface owing to differential expansion, a process
called exfoliation.
This breaking up into smaller fragments creates thescrees and also tends to make the rock surface very friable
and bad for climbing. As mentioned earlier, both Mount
Mawenzi and Mount Kenya were formed at
approximately the same time. Both had sizable craters
whose sides eroded as described leaving the plug, thesolidified core or neck of the original volcano. Both havequite similar rugged profiles owing to the high level of
erosion. Notice also the cloud creeping on to the saddle
from the Tanzanian side in figure 13. If one looks at
satellite images of Kilimanjaro the summit can often be
seen when the surrounding approaches are smothered incloud (see again figure 1). If walkers and climbers in thetropics become engulfed in this mist the temperature candrop very dramatically from comfortable thin shirt
weather to thick winter ‘trekking gear’ weather.
What next ?
Although I was very interested in climate and weather inthe early sixties I was never aware of any serious threat
to the world owing to global warming or, more correctly,
climate change. Along with the usual equipment required
for meteorological measurements and the fascination of
the weather patterns of the tropics, with the long andshort rains, the regular-as-clockwork afternoon thunderstorms and the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone),my interest in the weather has never waned. The thoughtthat the white crown of Kilimanjaro might disappear fromAfrica’s highest mountain was not a notion that hadcrossed my mind, nor anyone else known to me at thattime. Yet, even in those days, more than 35% of the ice
fields had disappeared from Kibo since the originalGerman survey in 1912 and more than an additional 45%
has disappeared since then.
What is curious is: ‘How long have we been contributing

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November/December

Figure 8a - Kibo Evening camp, August 1961

Figure 8b - Kibo Evening camp, January 2004

Photo: P J Bradley

Photo: Dr Hartmut Bielefeldt

Figure 9 - Author on the ice field near Gilman’s Point, Kibo in 1961

Figure 10 - Mount Kenya from Nyeri, showing glaciers (1958)

Photo: P J Bradley

Photo: P J Bradley

Figure 11 - Mount Elgon taken from 1700 m at Lugulu (1958)

Figure 13 - Mount Mawenzi, from the Kibo side of the saddle (1961)

Photo: P J Bradley

Photo: P J Bradleyto this warming of the atmosphere?’ Had the man-madewarming effect started as early as the beginning of the20th century or even much earlier? Was there sufficientburning of fossil fuels globally, at that time or from the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution, to have initiatedthis rise in atmospheric temperature? In any event, thetragedy is that very little can be done about this glacialrecession. There is a very reasonable school of thoughtthat suggests that, if there were a significant reduction offorest/wood burning around the mountains and a programof re-forestation set in train to help increase precipitation,then there might be a chance of reducing the rate of ice
recession. This is of course only local to the specificmountains. Another reasonable theory is that, as more of
the dark volcanic rock is exposed to the sun as a result of
melting ice, the increased heat absorbed increases themelting of the ice even more.

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Undeniably it is for governments to tackle the major
issues of climate change but it appears questionable
whether many will recognise the true urgency of the
problem or, if they do, will they wish to tackle it robustly
and with conviction. Tokenism is probably all that can besaid for many. One cannot seriously think of theconstantly increasing air traffic and believe that more
efficient engines will be developed to counteract theincreased fuel consumption! In practice there areconsiderable doubts as to whether this general change
can be reversed, except perhaps over an even longer
period than it has taken to get where we are today. It will
be a very sad day when the Shining Mountain no longer
shines.
References••••

Gregory, J.W. (1921) The Rift Valleys and Geology of East Africa
Spinks, P.C. (1945), Further Notes on the Glaciers of Kilimanjaro
and Mt. Kenya. (Geog. Journ., CVI, Nos 5 & 6)
Fuchs V.E. (1947), Volcanics of East Africa and the Pluvial
Periods, (Geog. Mag. Vol. LXXXIV, No 6)
Thompson, L. G. et al., (2002), Kilimanjaro Ice Cone Records Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa,
Science Vol 298 18th Oct. 2002

Acknowledgement
I should like to thank Dr Hartmut Bielefeldt for kindly
allowing me to include some of his photos in this article. I
should also point out that he has an excellent website
which shows a number of mountains he has climbed invarious parts of the world including Mount Everest
http://www.bielefeldt.de/ titele.htm

I will also mention the recent research literature ofProfessor Lonnie Thompson and his team. Although one
paper is mentioned here, others well worth reading, fromGEO Quarterly No 4

source, are available on-line from the Ohio State
University site. For those interested in following thissubject further, there is a colossal amount of material
under countless references on the Internet.
A few of the most interesting of these are listed below.
•
•
•
•
•

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Headlines/
http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/
units/reasearch/archiev/glagone.htm
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article158.html
http://www.Kilimanjaro.cc/EAM/index

Various government and tourist websites also give useful
information and advice.
Editor's Notes
The author, Peter Bradley, grew up in Kenya, on thefoothills of Mount Elgon, and has returned many times tothe country. Although his early studies involved geology,
physics and electronics, he has spent the last thirty years
in teaching and audiology.
Peter built his first weather satellite receiver in 1969 andproduced his first APT satellite images in 1971. He hassince used most of the methods and modes of reception anddisplay with much home-made equipment plus somecommercial hardware, and is still receiving remote images
thanks to NASA, EUMETSAT and David Taylor's
excellent software.
Peter has a continuing interest in East African weather
and climate patterns. He has held a radio amateur licencesince 1968 (G8DUG and G4BZE). Now retired, he plays
jazz and grows over 30 varieties of bougainvillea amongst
his other activities.

Copy Deadline for GEO Q5 - Friday, December 31, 2004
The Editor is always on the lookout for articles and images forinclusion in GEO Quarterly. These can relate to all aspects ofEarth Imaging, especially:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Technical articles concerning relevant hardware
Construction projects
Weather satellite images
Reports on weather phenomena
Description of readers’ satellite imaging stations
Activities from overseas
Letters to the Editor
Problems and Queries for our experts to answer

Images and Diagrams
Images can be accepted in any of the major bitmap formats, e,g,
JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF etc. Images in both monochrome andcolour are welcomed for inclusion. Line drawings and diagrams
are preferred in Windows metafile and postscript formats.
We can also scan original photographs, negatives and slides.
If your article submission contains embedded images anddiagrams, please note that we do also require, in addition,individual copies of each image/drawing which are notembedded within the article, for make-up purposes.

Contributions should of course be original and, where possible,
should be submitted to the editor in electronic format (floppy
disc, CD or e-mail attachment). But we will also accept
handwritten or typed copy should the need arise.

Submission of Copy

Please note, however, that major articles which contain large
numbers of satellite images, photographs or other illustrations
should be submitted well before this date so that they canbe prepared and made up into pages in time for publication.

Materials may also be sent as attachments to the following
e-mail address:

All materials for publication should be sent to the Editor, Les
Hamilton, 8 Deeside Place, Aberdeen, AB15 7PW, Scotland.

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Mike Stevens G4CFZ - mikeg4cfz@tiscali.co.uk
I have been involved with the reception of APT images
from polar orbiting satellites and wefax from Meteosat-7
for two years now. But mindful that the latter ceases
operation in just over a year from now and new digitalpolar orbiters will be with us in the near future, I madethe decision earlier this year to take the plunge andprepare myself for Meteosat-8 reception.
Let me start by saying that I am not a computer expert. I‘use them and abuse them’, as the saying goes. Little did
I know what lay before me, but as everyone who wasreceiving Meteosat-8 pictures said how spectacular theywere, this was a challenge I could not put aside.
The Computers
The first thing was to sort out computers. I already had
an Acer Travelmate 233 laptop with a 2.0 GHz Celeronprocessor, 400 Mb DDR SDRAM and 40 Gb hard drive
which I was already using for satellite reception. A friendof mine was ready to sell a second-hand Packard Bell PC,
so I made an offer which he accepted. In the event, thiswas to prove a bad decision; when I tried to update thesoftware from Windows Millennium Edition to XP theunit did a nose dive into the deck and crashed mostspectacularly. I quickly got rid of this as it was obviously
going to be a source of trouble. A workmate who likes
sorting out PC problems took it off my hands. I later foundout the hard drive and processor both had to be replaced
before it would function satisfactorily.
This still left me with the problem of a second computer.
Having read ‘MSG Update’ by David Taylor and John
Tellick in the launch issue of GEO, which provided usefulbackground information about the computers to use, I
decided that a visit to the PC Supermarket was the best
way forward: so off I went with cheque in hand and abudget in mind. After a great deal of looking and thinking
I purchased an excellent piece of kit, an E-Machine
2.8 GHz with Intel Celeron, 512 Mb RAM, 80 Gb Hard
Drive and DVD-CD Read/Write. So with luck no upgrades should be required, and it fell within my budget.
Networking
Time now to sort out networking. It was a good thing thatboth computers had Windows XP so the problem shouldbe easy. After fitting the crossover network lead I had todecide which unit was to be the master. I decided on theAcer Laptop. Each PC is configured separately using its
own Network Wizard. If you have ever carried out
networking then you will know all the tricks to look out
for. But if not, follow the Network Wizards which will
guide you through the set-up. One thing: you will be asked
if you wish to make a set-up disk and I would advise you
to do this. It will come in handy if you need to reset in the
future.
Start off by making the second PC access the Internet
through the master computer. Once that has been set up
open all the files that you need to share from the master
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Figure 1 - Segment from Meteosat-8 at 13:00 UT on July 24, 2004
© EUMETSAT 2004

computer (Acer). Having set up the network I tried a few
things from each PC to check if all was working— behold
it did. I could access the Internet from the second PC andaccess the files both ways from each PC.
Licence
Once my network was set up it was time to order all theitems of equipment. I had already sent off for the
EUMETSAT application form several weeks earlier andwhile I was setting up my network my licence arrived. I
duly signed and returned a copy, and within a week wascontacted by EUMETSAT regarding the purchase of mysoftware and eToken (EKU or EUMETCast Key Unit).
This I did immediately, paying by credit card. According
to my statement the cost worked out at just over £62. The
software and eToken arrived within four days by DHL,
which I thought was excellent.

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Hardware and Software
As I had decided to use the laptop as the receiver PC, I
had to order the USB version of the Technisat receiver.
Should I decide on changing PCs in the future I have theflexibility of being able to move this unit as well. I also
required the LNB and the satellite meter which I wassure would come in very handy. The equipment was duly
ordered from Timestep[1] and arrived safe and undamaged
within five working days
Assembly
My first task was to rebuild my existing satellite dish. I
had to remove the LNB previously used for the receptionof Meteosat-7 and fit the new LNB for Hot Bird-6—easy
enough—but do take care not to clamp everything up
tightly yet as you will need to move things around a bit toobtain maximum signal when setting up the dish.
I then installed the Technisat DVB receiver complete with
software: follow the instructions to the letter or it can get
confusing. My software loaded all right and within a few
minutes BBC World Service was on screen. But my signal
level was low with some of the pictures breaking up.
When I looked at the satellite dish I realised it would haveto be relocated for maximum signal as it was aiming
through the roof of the garage at this point!
Now here in Portland we get a lot of storms during thewinter season. The wind can be very extreme, the worst
storms producing gusts in excess of 100 mph, so locating
the dish higher to avoid the roof top would need a lot of
consideration to avoid it being blown down or vibrating
during high winds. But necessity can be the mother of
invention. I designed and built a small bracket and mast
on to which to fit the dish, whereby it could rest on theslant of the roof, so helping to add extra stability during
gale conditions.
Aligning the DishMy dish is a 60 cm offset model mounted approximately
3 metres above the ground. I am using CT100 satellite
cable with braided copper and aluminium foil screen andsingle-strand copper inner conductor. All connections are
by F-connectors with shrink-tubing as extra protection.
WXtrack was used to determine the accurate azimuth andelevation of Hot Bird-6 and then a compass was used tofind the directions (but remember to add the magnetic
variation, which is just over 3°). I calculated that theangles from my home to Hot Bird-6 were 160.12° azimuthand 30.30° elevation (though obviously those figureschange from differing locations around the UK).
So with compass in hand, the receiver switched on and thesat-meter in circuit I proceeded to set up the dish in its
higher location. There are a lot of satellites in that regionof the sky and it is very easy to miss Hot Bird 6 and locate
Astra instead (there are only 6° between them and thatamount of movement on a satellite dish is very small
indeed). This is where the compass comes in very handy
and used in conjunction with the sat-meter I found Hot
Bird 6 very quickly.
The elevation of the dish is not as one might expect. It
explains in some magazines that the angle should beshallower (flatter) towards the horizon owing to the offset
feed configuration, but in my case the dish is angled up

GEO Quarterly No 4

slightly, between 5° to 10° from vertical. Now this willvary at different locations around the U.K—the further
north you are located the shallower the angle of the dish.
This is all to do with elevation angles from the Earth’s
surface to the satellite.
SoftwareWith the dish permanently mounted I noticed an
immediate difference in the sat-meter reading, which
leapt to full scale deflection. I returned to the PC andopened up Setup4PC. When I activated the ‘status’ box
the ‘signal quality’ was 55%. That would certainly do tostart with, but further adjustments would be required
later.
I selected the DVB ‘viewer’ mode and located the BBC
World Service. The picture was stable and clear. Anothercheck you can carry out is to see if you are receiving
Italian stations: if so then you are aligned to Hot Bird-6
but, if you are receiving a lot of German stations you arelikely on Astra.
So to recap, the dish is now aligned (but may need some
final adjustments), the DVB viewer is working and we arereceiving a good signal with stable pictures.
Installing the Tellicast Software
My laptop has only two USB sockets. Into one of these I
plugged the DVB viewer cable and into the other the USB
eToken. Before loading the Tellicast software you arestrongly advised to read EUMETSAT‘s ‘Broadcast System
for Environmental Data’, EUM TD 15 [2], or you could
have lots of problems.
First load the software for the eToken then, after that has
loaded successfully, load the Tellicast reception software.
Note the following carefully: during the process you
will be asked for your username and password. These
items will have been e-mailed to you from EUMETSAT,
but when asked for them do not type them in. You mustuse copy and paste from the actual e-mail into theusername and password boxes (these letters andnumbers are case sensitive).
I made the mistake of trying to type these in by hand andit was only after several hours of concentration and help
from David Taylor that we discovered what I had done
wrong.
Once all the software had loaded I immediately opened
the Tellicast program and was confronted with the words‘Configuration Error’. Built within this program areseveral help utilities, one of which is the ‘Log File’. You
can open this log file and locate the fault—it will be listed.
Mine was listed as:‘incorrect interface address’ 192.168.238.238
The program was looking for the DVB Adaptor, which ofcourse I was not using. I had to locate the correct IP
address of the TechniSat USB device (which was plugged
into a USB socket).
As I stated in the beginning I am not a computer expert.
But there are certain things that we pick up as we goalong and I realised that if I could locate a DOS box
within Windows XP I could find its location. I aired mywww.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

problem on the GEO-Subscribers Internet Group andabout an hour later had an e-mail from Douglas Deanswith an attachment from an article written by Arne van
Belle, which read as follows:
Go to the start icon, click on ‘Run’. In the box marked’Open’ write ‘cmd’ then click ‘OK’. This will open the
DOS box. Type ‘ipconfig /all’ at the prompt then press‘enter’. You will now be shown a display listing each
item of your fitted hardware, each complete with its
Interface Address. Mine was noted as 169.254.212.2,
totally different from the one quoted above.

Figure 2 - The DOS box with prompt

I now went into the T-Systems folder and located therecv.ini files within which I located the incorrectinterface address. This was edited to the new one and,
immediately the new address was entered, the ‘T’ Icon
displayed in the system tray at the lower right of the PC
display changed from red to green—at last my PC wasconnecting to the DVB receiver and on returning to thesystem I discovered that the Announcement Channel was
active but that the Data Channels were not. (See also
Appendix II)
Again I cannot over-emphasise: do read EUM TD 15 andfollow the ‘DVB Software Startup’ section from page 27. It
is vital that you follow this through exactly as per
instructions or you will not obtain a working system.
It was at this stage I have to admit that I nearly gave up
because, having followed the procedures to the letter, mysystem still did not function. It was then that I contacted
the MSG-1 Yahoo!Group and posted a message. The
following evening there was a message from David Taylor
stating ‘I think there is something wrong with yourpassword’. And then it clicked—I had typed in mypassword and username instead of using the copy andpaste method.
I re-entered my name and password straight away, using
copy/paste, and the effect was immediate. All the Data
Channels came alive and the ‘Input graph’ box was fillingup with data.
At last the system was working.
Resetting the Dish for Maximum Signal
I was now ready to reset the satellite dish for maximum
signal using the ‘Signal Strength’ meter in Setup4PC (notthe Sat-meter). First I adjusted elevation by moving thedish up and down to find the highest reading and thenrepeated for azimuth by moving it from side to side. WhenI had found the highest readings I started to move the
LNB in towards the dish then slowly back out again.
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November/December

Every move was monitored using the Setup4PC meter
until I finally found the peak signal strength. The final
adjustment was to rotate the LNB in a clockwise direction
by about 10°, which showed my maximum signal to be
71%, fluctuating down to 69%, a mean of 70%.
At this point I proceeded to lock the dish at those settingsand secured the brackets. Finally I sprayed the dish (only)with a black anti-rust spray because of its hostileenvironment (salt spray etc.)
I immediately contacted David Taylor for a time-limited
edition of MSG Data Manager and Geosatsignal [3] which
he returned to me the following day. These were loaded on
to my processing PC (the E-Machine) and everything
switched on.
Making Images
Creating images with MSG Data Manager is simplicity
itself. Install the program, enter your registration code,
click the ‘setup’ tab (figure 3), and check the images you
require. Then open the ‘MSG-1 HRIT’’tab, click the Start
button, and sit back to watch the images build up(figure 4). The Meteosat-8 HRIT images are updated
every 15 minutes. You can also receive images from othergeostationary satellites around the world through the‘World’ tab (figure 5). Monochrome images from several
channels can be combined using GeoSatsignal to produce
coloured images (figures 6,7).
Conclusions
To say the results were stunning is an understatement!
The pictures continued to build before me. The qualityand detail are unbelievable. I remember sitting andlooking in awe at what I was seeing.
The total time taken from start to finish of this project
was seven weeks. The total cost of all the equipment
including the new PC had been just under £1000, so all in
all its not really cheap. But not too expensive either:achievable if you are careful and plan your way throughit, starting with what you can afford and building up yourequipment as you go along. See Appendix I
I have now purchased the full registered copy of bothMSG Data Manager and Geosatsignal4 as well as MSG
Animator. I can thoroughly recommend all these excellent
software packages from David Taylor. I also have to say a
special thank-you to David for giving me a lot of support
when I needed it, to Les Hamilton for his help in finding
contacts and to Douglas Deans for passing information on
to me. I’m also indebted to Arne van Belle for that little
tip about the DOS box and to all the members of theMSG-1 Yahoo!Group for their input. I could not have done
it without you.
For me this has been a huge learning curve and an
experience I will remember for a long time. It is all about
the amateur spirit of trying things that you are not sure
will work, then finding that they do—fantastic! Finally a
special thank you to my wife for her patience andencouragement to keep going when all seemed impossible.

I will just conclude by saying this:‘If I can do it so can you!’November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Figure 3
The MSG Data Manager ‘Setup’ tab

Figure 6
The equipment described in this article allows the user to download an
updated full-Earth Meteosat-8 image every 30 minutes.
Above, Meteosat-8 image dates from July 17, 2004
Image © EUMETSAT 2004

Figure 4
Thumbnail images displaying in the ‘HRIT’ tab during live receptionof Meteosat-8 via the Hot Bird-6 DVB transmission

Figure 7

Figure 5
The ‘World’ tab during reception of ‘foreign’ satellites
via the Hot Bird-6 DVB transmission

Once you are set up for reception of Meteosat-8, you can also receive
periodic images from the so-called ‘foreign’ geostationary satellites.
These include the European Meteosat-5 and Meteosat-7, the two
American GOES satellites and Japans GMS (currently relays from theageing GOES-9).
Above is shown a full disc Meteosat-5 image dating from July 17, 2004
Image © EUMETSAT 2004

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November/December

Appendix I - PC Cost and Specification
While a new, high-specification PC like Mike’s is ideal,
readers who cannot match his price outlay should not be
put off. I think that many readers will be able to acquire
perfectly adequate second-hand PCs (e.g. a Pentium III,
500 MHz, 256Mb) for reception much more cheaply, anduse their existing main PC for processing (perhaps with amemory top-up). I would suggest making use of what you
already have and only resort to purchasing a new PC if
absolutely essential.
Appendix II - IP Address
Mike chose to use the IP address which had been assigned
to his USB adaptor and alter the recv.ini file to matchthat address. For consistency with everyone else, I would
suggest leaving the recv.ini file alone and altering the IP
address of the USB adaptor to the usual 192.168.238.238.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Start, Settings, Network and dial-up connections (Win 2000) or
Start, Settings, Control Panel, Network connections (XP)Right-click on the required connection (e.g. B2C2 Broadband
receiver...) then select ‘Properties’
Select the ‘Networking’ tab
Select Internet Procol (TCP/IP) from the drop-down list
Click Properties
Check ‘Use the following IP address’
Enter IP addresss: 192.168.238.238, subnet mask: 255 255 255.0

References
1 Timestep Electronics - http://www.time-step.com
2 http://www.eumetsat.de/en/area2/publications/td15.pdf
3 Satsignal Software - http://www.satsignal.net
Figure 8 - Segment from Meteosat-5 at 08:30 UT on July 23, 2004

Acknowledgements© EUMETSAT 2004

Thanks to David Taylor for appendices I and II.

Last June, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured the first everhigh-resolution images of Saturn’s small outer moon Phoebeand six of these, acquired in visible light through the narrowangle camera, were used to create this mosaic. Image scale is
74 meters per pixel.
Phoebe shows unusual variation in brightness over its surface
due to the existence on some crater slopes and floors of brightmaterial—thought to contain ice—on what is otherwise one ofthe darkest known bodies in the Solar System. Bright streaks on
the rim of the large crater at the top of this image may have been
revealed by the collapse of overlying darker material from thecrater wall. The large crater below right-center shows evidenceof alternating bright and dark layered deposits.
Hints of Phoebe's irregular topography can be seen peeking out
from the shadows near the terminator to the left of the image.
These are real features, possibly the rims of craters or mountainpeaks just catching the first light of sunrise on Phoebe.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA,the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science InstitutePage 38

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GEO Quarterly No 4

This composite of two NOAA-17 channel-2 images from the 11:24 and 13:05 UT passes on
August 8 shows the remnant of hurricane ‘Alex’ about to bring flooding to much of Great Britain.
HRPT data: NOAA Satellite Active Archive (http://www.saa.noaa.gov) Processing: Satsignal and Photoshop

On September 9, a massive explosion near
North Korea’s northern border with China
produced a mushroom-shaped cloud morethan two miles in diameter. The smoke cloud
was observed by satellites, fuelling
speculation in the media that it might haveresulted from a nuclear detonation. In theevent, it was later established that the
explosion was in fact related to work on ahydro-electric project.
Peter Bradley was surprised to receive theaccompanying GOES-9/GMS image, acquired
at 09:00 UT on that very day, via the
Meteosat-8 FSD stream. Peter comments:‘My friend Peter Thompson, who is an avid
weather watcher, asked me to check that theimage was not simply suffering from missing
segments. It coincides with the time of theNorth Korea explosion, we believe. The
missing region of the image is clearly not theresult of missing segments as the white band
slants across the horizontal segments—
possibly indicative of cutting! We believe theimage may have suffered from censoring’.
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November/December

Now that the GEO Quarterly is firmly on the map and the
Leicester Symposium is done and dusted, we have at lastfound the time to read through the information so manyof you kindly provided when completing the shortquestionnaire included with the Membership Form in our
Launch Issue. A large proportion of these forms werecompleted, providing the GEO Team with invaluable help
to improve the service we offer you.

‘What about running readers’ competitions from time totime?’ was one request.

And what a welcome you have given us! Many of the mostfrequent comments appear in the title banner above
Other comments included ‘promising start’, ‘nicesurprise’, ‘fabulous’, ‘very well presented’ ... needless tosay, everyone on the GEO Team thanks you for your goodwishes and encouragement.

Well, as a new organisation, GEO will take time to build
up a regular panel of authors—resourcing from theInternet provided us with the opportunity to find our feet.
GEO also has a duty to meet the needs of those readers
who are not themselves Internet-connected. Many
subscribers in fact commented very favourably on thesearticles and images.

GEO Quarterly Format
With very few exceptions, the A4 format was widely
praised as being easy on the eyes and many readers werevery much taken by the full page colour images: only one
reply favoured the smaller A5 format. The overall qualityof the magazine and its images was commented upon time
and time again. Our suggestion of possibly distributing
GEO Quarterly on CD-ROM did not meet with approvalat all. Several readers made the point that much of themagazine’s appeal lay in the fact that it could be enjoyedaway from the computer screen in the comfort of anarmchair. A few readers stated they would be prepared to
pay more to ensure that we continued the printed format:
one reader went so far as to state he would not renew his
subscription if he could only receive his Quarterlies on
CD. In fact, only one reader favoured the electronic
format.
Content
By and large most of you felt that GEO Quarterly waswell balanced and that the content provided a good mix of
topics which were easy to read. From some quarters wewere reminded to ‘keep it simple’, ‘remember that all
readers are not experts’, and that ‘everyone is notcomputer literate’. But we also received several requests
for more articles of a technical nature.
The QFH construction article went down well, and there
were requests for more articles on antennas in general, as
well as antenna-building projects. There was a recurring
theme requesting more ‘hands-on’ topics, articles covering
receivers, and construction projects of various kinds. Tworeaders were keen to learn more about actuallyconnecting their antenna to the receiver. Which is thebest type of co-ax to use? Which connectors are mostsuitable etc? Hopefully, Arne van Belle’s article in
GEO Q2 has already addressed these issues.

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Sourcing from the Internet
There were also a few reservations. It was suggested that
too many items were ‘reprinted from website material’
and that more weight should be given to images thatamateurs can receive themselves.

The current polar orbiting satellites (which amateurs canreceive) are now in their twilight years, so we must lookforward to the imagery of the likes of Terra and Aqua. At
present images from these satellites are only available online, but direct reception from these craft may well be thenext great challenge for the amateur: at present theInternet is the only source of data products from thesesatellites and we must raise awareness regarding what
may lie ahead.
But meantime, do please select your best weather
satellite images and send them to the editor for possible
inclusion in future GEO Quarterlies.
Which Satellites are GEO Readers Receiving?
It was interesting to note that NOAA APT on 137 MHz is
still by a long way the most popular satellite acquisition
mode—almostof those responding are actively receiving APT from the NOAA satellites. The accompanying
table summarises the returns from the first 200 survey
forms.
Meteosat-7

19%

Meteosat-7 PDUS

3.5%

Meteosat-8 (MSG)

29%

NOAA APT64%NOAA HRPT

12%Feng Yun C/HRPT

2%

Earth and Planetary Imaging
The final question we asked was whether GEO should
devote itself exclusively to planet Earth. A resounding
62% of you wished also to include some coverage ofplanetary missions, though it was emphasised that themain focus of GEO should remain the Earth itself.

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GEO Quarterly No 4

Two of GEO’s German readers, Hartmut Schaksmeier andGerry Berg, sent in this self-same APT image from NOAA-12
showing the remains of hurricane ‘Alex’ passing over Europe on
August 12, 2004. This HVCT false-colour image was created in
WxtoImg, with added precipitation colouring, and clearly shows
the torrential rainfall over parts of western Europe, the Low
Countries and Germany taking the brunt of the battering.
Just over a week earlier Alex, at the time a category-2 hurricane,
had made glancing contact with North Carolina on the easternseaboard of the USA, but scarcely made landfall, and did little
damage.
The most notable feature of Alex was how late this first storm of
the 2004 Hurricane Season appeared; it was the fifth-latest ‘firsthurricane’ recorded over the Atlantic during the past half century.
The previous latest was the infamous hurricane Andrew, whichreached hurricane strength on August 22, 1992 and proved oneof the costliest and most damaging ever. In 2003, by contrast,
hurricane Ana arrived on April 22, before the official start of
Hurricane Season, which is June 1.

Dr E G Duncan from St Andrews in Fife, Scotland wrote in to say
how impressed he was with the image of Iceland in GEO Q2.
‘Iceland is one of my favourite subjects, both in APT and HRPT,
specially in late summer when the four permanent glaciers may
be seen. Note the colour of the underlying rock (lava) showing
through the thinning ice at the periphery of the glaciers. Indeed,summer 2004 has been exceptionally warm in Iceland and insome areas glaciers have lost three metres of ice. The image
below came from NOAA-16 on August 11, and was processed on
a Timestep system. It is a colour composite with the red andgreen applied to channel-2 and blue to channel-1’.

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November/December

Hendricus J. Lulofs - Blacksburg, Virginia USA
As a meteorologist for NOAA’s National Weather Service
I have had the good fortune to have access to some of themost advanced meteorological technology in the World.
Yet, there is a special feeling of satisfaction when
receiving and processing one’s own satellite images
through a home polar orbiter reception site. Like many ofyou, I have for many years enjoyed the hobby of polar
orbiter reception.
Soon after being able to reliably receive quality images, I
became as you might say ‘obsessed’ with creating images
with false colourization. I have divided this article into
two sections. The first describes my personal journey
through the learning process of image colourization—
which led me to the development of the HJL technique;the second describes in detail how you can use thistechnique to generate high quality false colour images.
‘HJL’ by the way stands for my initials.
My APT False Colourization Journey
Early on I tried false colouring APT images by the use ofoff-the-shelf software, first with a simple DOS programfrom Weather Dynamics before moving up to David
Taylor’s Satsignal software. The benefit of off-the-shelf
software is that it is automated and can consistently giveyou good results from APT images. But my quest was for
great results!
One day, while visiting the Multifax website, I spotted awrite up about using programs such as Paintshop and
Photoshop to add false colour to images. This was my firstendeavour into manually intervening in the false-colour
process. The technique resulted in superb cloud images
but land and water colourization were not what I wanted.
This was, however, a step in the right direction! Thanks
go to Multifax for posting their article; some of the steps
outlined below are a direct development of theirtechniques.
A year or so later I came across the WTOC-11 website ofPatrick Prokop from Savannah, Georgia, USA. Patrick
appeared to be using a technique similar to the Multifax
one but he had much nicer looking water and land colours.
I started corresponding with Patrick and he walked me
through his technique: this used David Taylor’s WXtrackprogram to generate a coloured background image andthen merged it with the visible and infrared images fromthe NOAA polar orbiters. This proved to be a huge step inthe right direction and I am most grateful to Patrick forhis help.
I felt I was getting closer to where I wanted to be, yet still
desired more. Specifically I wanted to be able to include
topographical information into the background of theimage. My first step in this direction was to use Photoshop

Page 42to blend the NOAA image with the background map. The
benefit of this was that clear land areas in the images now
displayed some terrain and lake details that enhanced thebackground map from WXtrack. Next, after learning fromDavid Taylor that I could substitute higher resolution
maps into WXtrack, I searched for the highest resolution
topographical map my PC could handle. The file I ended
up using was almost 100 megabytes in size! Using thismap as a source for my background images was a major
step forward.
I next wanted to work on the overall clarity of the images.
I felt that the way I was blending the images was washingout the image to a certain extent. By experimenting in
Photoshop I discovered that the blending options feature
produced positive results. I also wanted to work on theoverall sharpness of the images and to do this I purchaseda Photoshop plug-in called ‘Mystical Tint Tone’. This
software really lets the advanced user put the finishing
touches to a false-colour image.
When reading the detailed instructions below, one mightsay: ‘This is nice but won’t it take long to do?’ It originally
took me about 10 to 15 minutes to add false colour to each
image. One time-consuming step was breaking up the IR
and VIS images into identical sizes so that they could beoverlaid. Fortunately Craig Anderson’s Wxtoimg program
does this for you and cleans up the images as well, saving
time and increasing the quality. (One of the things I reallylike about this technique is that it still uses software fromtwo of our most respected developers, David Taylor andCraig Anderson, and gives us the opportunity to support
them by registering their products.)
It also dawned on me that Photoshop lets you record
macros. I thus broke the process up into three macros andnow I can complete the entire process in just three to fiveminutes. I had finally reached APT nirvana! The resultsof the HJL technique can be seen on my WEB site at:
http://users.adelphia.net/~hlulofs/

The HJL Technique: A Step-by-Step ‘How-to’ Guide
My raw NOAA images are initially captured using Q-fax
software from Quorum Communications. Most capture
software available today, such as Wxsat and WXtoImg,
work equally well and will produce a raw image consistingof two greyscale satellite images side by side, one showing
the scene in visible light, the other in infrared. (figure 1).
David Taylor’s WXtrack software is now used to generate
the topographic background for the pass. My first step
was to replace the background image file (UserMap.jpg)
with one of much higher resolution [1]. In WXtrack’s‘Setup’ tab, double-click on the required pass for thesatellite you require. This takes you to the ‘Ground Path’

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November/December 2004

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GEO Quarterly No 4

Figure 1 - A raw APT image as captured by Quorum Communications Q-Fax software

tab where a click on the ‘Make picture’ button generates
the required background image. This is automaticallysaved under the name ‘result.bmp’. The higher the qualityof the ‘UserMap’ the better will be that of the ‘result.bmp’
file saved in the WXtrack folder (figure 2, page 44)
For the next step, I use WXtoImg to prepare separate
visible and IR images. I load the raw image I want to workon (figure 1) and check <Options → Disable Map Overlay>.
Under <Enhancements> I select ‘Contrast Enhance (NOAA
channel A only)’—this is the visible channel—then savethis image (figure 3). I repeat for the IR image by
selecting ‘Contrast Enhance (NOAA channel B only)’ thensave this also.
Adding the Colour
The remaining steps of the technique are all carried out
using Adobe Photoshop. The result.bmp file (figure 2) andthe two files generated by WXtoImg (figure 3) are all
opened together in Photoshop. Select each of the latter
two images in turn and change its image mode to RGB byselecting ‘RGB colour’ from the <Image> menu.

Figure 3 - A visible image split and optimised by WXtoImg

Now you need to create two image curves (one for thevisible and one for the IR). You only need to do this once
because once you have created them you can save thecurves and then recall them every time you need them.

‘Channel’ box to select ‘Blue’. Hold down the mouse on the
point at the upper right of the graph and pull it straight
down the right-hand axis until the ‘Output’ box reads zero(the image should now look yellow). Select ‘Green’ in the‘Channel’ box but this time drag the upper right-handpoint down to just 165. Leave the ‘Red’ channel at 255.
Click the ‘Save...’ button, type in a suitable filename suchas ‘vis.acv’, save this curve for future use then click ‘OK’.

Lets start with the visual image. Click anywhere on thepalette with the visible picture to make sure it is active
then choose <Image → Adjustments → Curves> to reveal
the ‘Curves’ palette. Use the drop-down menu in the

Click anywhere over the IR image to make it active andcreate a curve for this image too. In the ‘Curves’ palettechoose the ‘Red’ channel and set that point to zero (theimage turns cyan). Choose the ‘Green’ channel and set

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

Figure 2 - A topographical map generated by WXtrack (left)

Figure 5 - Merged and optimised false-colour infrared and visible images(left). Background map generated by WXtrack (right)

Figure 7 - Choosing a Photoshop blending mode
Page 44

Figure 4 -November/December

Colourized infrared (blue, left) and visible (orange, middle)
images with the background map (right)

Figure 6 - Lining up the false-colour image with the backgroundFigure 8 - Choosing Photoshop Auto Levels
www.geo-web.org.uk

November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observationthat at 90. Leave the ‘Blue’ channel at 255. Save thiscurve for future use (as ir.acv) and hit ‘OK’ (figure 4).
Combining the Images
The colourized visible and IR images must now be
combined into one ‘false colour’ image. Make sure both
images, with their curves applied, are loaded into
Photoshop and that the ‘Layers’ palette is open (if notpress f7). Click the visible image to make it active andyou should see a thumbnail copy of it appear in the‘Layers’ palette with the word ‘background’ next to it.
Place the mouse pointer over the word ‘background’, holdthe left mouse button down and drag the small rectangle
that appears over the centre of the IR image—thenrelease the mouse. It will appear that you now have two
images in the one window. In the ‘Layers’ palette, set theopacity to 50%, which should enable you to ‘see through’the visible image and view the IR image underneath.
The images have now to be aligned exactly on top of eachother. Since WXtoImg created the two images the exact
same size, you should be able to align them so that they
are perfectly stacked. Move the top image by clicking andholding down the left mouse button and dragging it into
the desired position. Once you have the images aligned
click the small triangle () at the top right-hand cornerof the ‘Layers’ palette and select ‘Flatten’ from the dropdown menu that appears. The IR and visible images will
now be combined into a single normal image. Finally, if
the resulting image is too dark, select <Image →Adjustments → Auto Levels> from the main menu-bar to
obtain optimum lighting levels (figure 5).
Adding the backgroundNow is the time to merge the false-colour image with themap background (results.bmp). To do this, make sure yourGEO Quarterly No 4

false colour image is the active window (click over it): you
should now see a thumbnail copy of the false-colour image
in the ‘Layers’ palette with the word ‘background’ next to
it. Place the mouse pointer over the word ‘background’,hold the left mouse button down, drag the small rectangle
and release it over the centre of the ‘Results’ image. In the‘Layers’ palette, set the opacity to about 60%, zoom in toa cloud-free area of the image that shows recognisablefeatures and line up the two images (figure 6). Once you
are happy, set the opacity back to 100%.
Click the small triangle () at the top right-hand cornerof the ‘Layers’ palette and this time select ‘Blending
Options’ (In Photoshop CS you can also select this option
using <Layer → Layer Style → Blending Options> from themain menu-bar). Click on the drop down menu at the top
centre called ‘Blend Mode’. The two options I find to givethe most satisfactory results are ‘Lighten’ and ‘Screen’(figure 7).
Finalising the image
Once you have applied the ‘Blend Mode’ you wish to use,
flatten the image as before. If you wish you can crop as
needed and use Photoshop’s auto levels feature (figure 8)
to add the finishing touch to your masterpiece. Now savethis image and upload to you website. You are DONE!
Examples of finished images can be seen on the insideback cover of this issue (figures 9 and 10).
References
1. Good sources for high resolution maps are:• NASA’s Visible Earth Web Site:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?11656• GLOBE & XPLANET Maps may also work:
http://www.radcyberzine.com/xglobe/

Record Rainfall hits Eastern USA
According to NOAA, the battering from hurricanes Frances, Ivan
and Jeanne broke September rainfall records throughout thesouth-east and east coast of the USA. Pennsylvania, Georgia
and West Virginia all experienced a record wet September andthe city of Birmingham, Alabama set a record with 21.9 cm ofrain falling in one 24-hour period: breaking a record that had

stood since July 1916—also the result of a tropical storm. This
year’s three September hurricanes came ashore hard on theheels of five tropical systems that had already impacted onthese states during August. Although wind damage was
extensive with each of the storms, flooding was the major
impact, with states from Florida to New York feeling the effects.

Weather Satellite Frequencies
Frequencies (MHz)
APT

HRPT

Geostationary
Satellites

NOAA-12137.501698.0GOES-ENOAA-14-1707.0GOES-W

NOAA-15137.501702.5

NOAA-16-

NOAA-17

Polar Orbiting Satellites

Feng Yun 1C, 1D

Location

Frequencies
WEFAX (MHz)

USA

75°W

1691.0USA

135°W

1691.0

Meteosat-5

INDOEX

63°E

1691.01698.0

Meteosat-6

Europe10°E

1691.0137.621707.0

Meteosat-7

Europe0°1691.0, 1694.5-

1700.4

Meteosat-8

Europe0°

D VB

Download NASA 2-line Elements
Satellite tracking programs require regular updates of the NASA 2-line element sets that are essential for calculating the positionsof Earth-orbiting satellites. One of the best Internet sources for these files is Celestrak at: http://www.celestrak.com
Elements for many groups of satellites are updated daily. Particularly useful are:http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/weather.txt (most weather sats)
http://www.celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/stations.txt (ISS)www.geo-web.org.uk

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GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

November/December

Douglas Deans - douglas@dsdeans.freeserve.co.uk

This quarter sees the launch of a new CD for theShowcase library. A new CD is a rare occurrence so I am
taking the opportunity, whilst software updates are in
short supply, to provide some information on the content.
To compensate the column for GEO Q5 will be dedicatedto software updates.
There is still plenty of room on GS2, the general weather
satellite program CD, so any new offerings of that nature
will be added there. However, there are events from time
to time which are of particular interest and where theproduction of a CD can greatly help those without fast
broadband connections, while a prepared composite
product can also be popular with others for time-saving
reasons. The images being returned by the two NASA
Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, aresimply breathtaking and in my opinion fall into the abovethat some people still run basic software, I haveintentionally left the GS5 structure simple. The images
are in jpg format, a file type recognised by all image
viewing software.
There are four folders, comprising an image folder and a
description folder for each of the two rovers. The image
descriptions are in simple text format as all computerswill have a copy of Notepad. The image and description
file for each rover have the same number so crossreferencing is simplicity itself. Simply load a particular
image file number from the image folder and then thecorresponding number from the image description folder
for a full explanation of the content.
GS5 is now available. For further information and how toorder from the Showcase Library please see details below.

‘Bonneville Crater’ on Mars, imaged from the Spirit RoverThis is a low resolution image! The corresponding coloured image on the CD is at much higher resolution

category. Particularly stunning are the panoramic views,
some in full colour, some as big as 30 Mb jpeg images, andall with unbelievable digital clarity and resolution. Many
have been adapted for 3D viewing.
With that in mind, GS5 has been produced, providing achronological account, to date, of the two rovers’ progress
across miles of Martian terrain. The CD will be kept up todate as the project continues to completion.
The rovers have an array of cameras, some for navigationand hazard avoidance etc., and an equally impressive setof science tools on the robotic arm carrying thesophisticated instrument package. However, it is the
panoramic views that constitute the major downloads, so
it is those that have been provided on the CD. In addition
it would be impossible to include all camera images andscience data on a single CD. To view the entire image
suite and for vast amounts of additional technical andscience information may I suggest you visit:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Recognising the huge array of programs available, andPage 46

How to Purchase CDs
Simply write to the address below requesting GS1,
GS2, GS3, GS4 or GS5. Prices are £5 for any single
CD, 2 for £8, 3 for £11, 4 for £14 or all 5 for £17.
Please enclose cash or cheque (made payable to
Douglas Deans not GEO) for the appropriate amount.
Nothing else is required.
The cost includes the CD, packaging and posting, asmall donation towards the cost of overheads, thecost of overseas orders and the search for new or
updated software. No fee is asked from overseas
members although an exchange of software orinteresting satellite images is always welcome.
Orders are normally dispatched on the day of receipt.

Order your CDs from:
Douglas Deans, 17 Montrose Way,
Dunblane, Perthshire FK15 9JL, Scotland.

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November/December 2004

Group for Earth Observation

GEO Quarterly No 4

Hurricane Season - 2004
GS1 A l l D a vi d Ta yl o r ' s w e a t he r s a t e l l i t e p r o g r a m s a ndli b ra ri e s , i nc lud i ng the c urre nt re le a s e s o f W X tra c k ,S atsi gnal, HRP T Reader, GeoS atsi gnal, GroundMap,
RX2 PassControl and many other program extras. This
disc also contains a large quantity of sample files, manyof high-resolution data, for use with these programs.
WXtrack
Satellite Tracking Program v 3.4.4C
reates images from
SatSignal
v 4.0.8
wave files
Converts raw HRPT data
HRPT Reader
v 2.5.4
files into images
Manipulates geostationary v 4.1.0
GeoSatsignal
weather satellite images
GroundMap

Rescales satellite images

v 1.3.8

RX2 PassControl

Computer control program
for the RX2 receiverv 2.2.8

GS2 A wi d e r a ng e o f s o ftwa r e fo r a ll a s p e c ts o f we a the rs a t e l l i t e r e c e p t i o n, i nc l ud i ng t r a c k i ng , r e c e i vi ng ,monitoring and image manipulation. Content is detailedb e l o w b u t m a n y o t h e r e x t r a s a r e p r o v i d e d . Ti t l e s
correspond with folder names. * implies a DOS program.
Recall (wave file recorder), PaletteCollection D02(modifies Wxsat colour palettes).
Scanner recorder v 1.8 (wave filerecorder), *NOAA95/*FENG99
Collection D03(software for the NOAA 95 HRPT
project)
Wxsat v 2.59 (wave file
Collection D04
recorder/decoder), Satmon (wavefile recorder).
AGSatTrack
Satellite tracking program v 1.33
Documents for the Cirkit Wxsat
Cirkitreceiver and the UOSat receiver(PDF format)
Downloads current weather
e-weatherman
conditions from the Internet direct toyour computer
Element Manager 2-line element manager v 1.58
Footprint
Satellite tracking program v 2.10
Irfan View
Image/slideshow viewer v 3.80
Evaluation version
JVcomm32(APT/FAX/SSTV decoder)Macintosh kepler Edits verbose AMSAT format
editorelements. Mac OS X and OS9 only.
Image processing program
NeoPaint(30 day evaluation)
I
mage processing program
Paintshop Pro(30-day evaluation)
Satellite tracker and wave file
Satscape
recorder v 2.00
Utility program for splitting andSplitterreuniting large files
WAV file recording and decoding
WXtoImg
program with many options. v 2.5.10

The sunshine state of Florida, USA suffered an
unprecedented battering during August and September
this year when an unprecedented four hurricanes hit theregion in just six weeks. Two of these are illustrated
below in images captured at Ceará State Department ofMeteorology, Brazil.

Hurricane Danielle, a NOAA 16 HRPT image on August 17, 2004
Image: Raul Fritx Teixeira, Funceme, Brazil

GS3 3DEM Package for 3D Terrain Visualisation
This CD includes the full set of GLOBE Tiles to allow you
to p r o d uc e e xc e lle nt i m a g e s a nd flyb ys fr o m HRP T
inages. Also included is a selection of Mars MOLA files,
sample images and helpful guides by Ed Murashie.
GS4 Image CD
A wide selection of high-resolution remote images froma range of satellites, including stunning imagery from theSpace Shuttle missions. A full description and source ifprovided for each image.

GS5 Mars Rover Panoramics
A chronologi cal account, i n panorami c i mages, of theNASA Mars Rovers' progress across the Martian Terrain

Hurricane Ivan, a NOAA 16 HRPT image acquired when the storm wasin its infancy over the Atlantic Ocean on September 3, 2004

www.geo-web.org.uk

Image: Raul Fritx Teixeira, Funceme, Brazil

Page 47

GEO Quarterly No 4Group for Earth Observation

Nigel Evans organises this on-line discussion forum on
Yahoo!®Groups. Called GEO-Subscribers, it provides ameans whereby GEO subscribers can share theirexperiences and help each other with problems. And you
do not have to be a GEO member to join GEOSubscribers—any enthusiast with an interest in Earth
Observation is welcome to subscribe to the forum.
Queries posted on GEO-Subscribers are often answered
within just a few hours (sometimes minutes), making thisundoubtedly the fastest way to keep up to date in the
Earth Observation field. Many subscribers have alreadybenefited from the service—so can you!
To sign up with GEO-Subscribers, visit the GEO website
at:November/December

Douglas Deans publishes a weekly weather satellite
report on this Internet Mailing List, generally on
Mondays.
The List will keep you up to date with any change instatus, and with any irregularities in transmissions, bothfor the polar orbiting and geostationary satellites
throughout the world.
The List will also include, when relevant, interim
updates, details of unexpected problems and news items.
You can join this group at:weather-satellite-reports-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

http://www.geo-web.org.uk/about.html

and type your e-mail address into the YAHOO ‘send’window at the foot of that page. Then click on theYahoo!Groups logo to submit your request.

GEO Helplines
Douglas Deans
All aspects of weather satellites from APT, HRPT to
Meteosat-8 DVB/EUMETCast systems.
• telephone:(01786) 82 28 28• e-mail: douglas@dsdeans.freeserve.co.uk
John Tellick

Information about the hardware required to receive
Meteosat-8 and advice about registering for the various
MSG services. John will also ‘field’ any queries of amore general nature about any aspect of receiving
weather satellite transmissions.
• telephone: (0208) 390 3315
• e-mail: info@geo-web.org.uk
Keith Holland
Specifically help for APT users (137 MHz band) andMeteosat-7 wefax.
• e-mail: geo@koholland.plus.com
E-mail contact can of course be made at any time, but
we would ask you to restrict telephone contact to theperiod 7.00-9.00 pm in the evenings.

NOAA ‘N’ Launch Imminent
NOAA has announced that, if all goes according to plan,
their next APT satellite is scheduled for launch on
February 12, 2005. This satellite, which will become
NOAA-18 once in orbit, will transmit on a new
frequency: either 137.10 MHz of 137.9125 MHz (which
frequency will apply has yet to be announced).
Page 48

Back Issues
If you are a recent recruit to GEO, you may beinterested to learn that you can complete yourcollection of GEO Quarterly magazines bypurchasing back-issues. These are available, to
GEO members only, on a unit price basis asdetailed below.
• UK• Europe• N America• Rest of World(2nd class mail)(printed paper)(printed paper)(printed paper)

£3.50
£4.20
£5.10
£5.10

Back-Issues Currently Available
GEO Q2
GEO Q3-

May/June 2004
Aug/Sept 2004

Requests for back issues should be sent to:
Nigel Evans, GEO-SUBS, Eventail, 7 Gloster
Ropewalk, Dover, Kent CT17 9ES, UK
Payment can be made by supplying your credit card
details (card number + expiry data). UK readers
can also pay by personal cheque or postal order.
Enquiries for more information can be sent tomembers@geo-web.org.uk

Launch Issue
We still have free copies of the GEO Launch Issue
available. If you have friends who might beinterested in learning about GEO, please encouragethem to send for their copy by completing theapplication form on the GEO website at:www.geo-web.org.uk

http://www.geo-web.org.uk/join.html

Fires in Corsica and Sardinia, captured by Arne van Belle from a Meteosat-8 HRV frame at 14:15 UT on August 21, 2004
Image © EUMETSAT 2004

The final false-colour images created using the ‘Screen’ blending mode (figure 9, left) and the ‘Lighten’ blending
mode (figure 10, right). Read Hendricus Lulofs’ article on page 42 to discover how to produce APT images like these.