GOES-9 Results
last updated 29 December 2009
Please give credit for use of our GOES satellite images to: "NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, data from NOAA GOES".
Table of Contents
Hurricane Darby from GOES-9 at 1800 UTC on 26 July 1998.
This is one of the last images from GOES-9 at 135W, where it was decommissioned by NOAA as GOES-WEST during the previous week due to NESDIS's concern over a bad bearing.
- Noise from bad bearing visible in GOES-9 at 1500 UTC on 15 July 1998, for this image of the Baja region.
Buzz from the failing momentum wheel running at at 2900 rpm on GOES-9 shows up as microphonic noise in some of the visible detectors.
- Hurricane Agatha in the Pacific 13 June 1998 at 2045 UTC, just as it officially became a hurricane with winds of 55 knots.
- Kilauea lava flow on 17 January 1998, observed as a few hot 4 km pixels in the 3.9 micron infrared channel, which is especially sensitive to hot objects.
This flow was not very destructive, fortunately.
- Hawaiian volcano tops poke up through the 6.7 micron water vapor channel, as observed on 17 January 1998.
Normally, you cannot see the ground in this channel, which becomes opaque below the top millimeter of water vapor, but the high mountains in this region of dry subsidence are radiatively exposed to outer space.
Water vapor is an important greenhouse gas in the upper troposphere, helping to trap heat in the lower levels.
Without this blanket, the Hawaiian mountain tops get very cold at night.
December 1997 from GOES-9 (10MB QT movie), full-disk images every 3 hours as a highly compressed multi-spectral combination of the visible, 4 micron and 11 micron channels. Intermittent outages only allowed us to capture about 80 percent of the possible images.
- GOES-9 limb shots on 13 December 1997, 2100 UTC present crisp simultaneous side-on views of thunderstorms in the east Pacific (Solomon Islands) and South America (Argentina), along with a clear summer day in New Zealand.
- November from GOES-9 (4MB QT movie), full-disk images every 3 hours as a highly compressed multi-spectral combination of the visible, 4 micron and 11 micron channels. Intermittent outages only allowed us to capture about half of the possible images.
- October from GOES-9 (5MB QT movie), full-disk images every 3 hours as a highly compressed multi-spectral combination of the visible, 4 micron and 11 micron channels. Intermittent outages only allowed us to capture about half of the possible images.
- Alaska in autumn at 2100 UTC on 26 October 1997.
On a clear day, you can see Anchorage, the Cook Passage, Kodiak Island, and many coastal and mountainous features, even north of the arctic circle.
- Hurricane Pauline in GOES-9 multi-spectral color on 7 September 1997.
Once again, a special 3-D edition was rendered.
- Hurricane Nora in the Pacific, where the GOES-9 visible channel sees a nice big cloudy eye at 1630 UTC, 22 September 1997, south of Baja at 19N 111W, with 125 mph peak winds.
The same view, artistically combined with the infrared channels, provides a colorized version.
Later, a 3-D rendering of the colorized version was produced and printed in Newsweek and Der Speigel.
- Hurricane Linda
- GOES-9 sees a Shuttle at 1800 UTC on 1 July 1997. This unusually steep angle shot was provided by Bryan Batson of the United Space Alliance.
- Pretty blue Pacific and Great Lakes at 1745 UTC, 21 May 1997. The false-color imagery from visible, 4 micron and 11 micron channels displays multi-level clouds from the central USA to mid-Pacific, with some pleasant spring clearings in normally stormy locations.
- GOES-9 sees big brush fires in Malibu, CA at 1945 UTC, 21 October 1996. The deep blue ocean results from using the 4 micron channel for the blue component in the RGB image.
- As the new GOES-WEST satellite, GOES-9 says "Aloha" to Hawaii, 14 January 1996, 2100 UTC. As usual, it is gorgeous weather in the islands.
- At this time, GOES-9 is at 110W, drifting westward by one degree per day, on its way to becoming GOES-WEST at 135W, while GOES-8 is operating as GOES-EAST at 75W. This multi-spectral image uses Imager channels 1, 2 and 4 for RBG coloration.
- Seasonal color stereo, GOES-8 and GOES-9 scan the full earth at midday, 4 January 1996. The contrast is obvious between winter in North America and summer in South America.
- Christmas stereo, GOES-8 am GOES-9 scan the full earth at midday, 25 December 1995. The two satellites are at the longitudes of the east and west coasts of the conterminous United States.
- Shuttle launch observed 12 November 1995, 1200-1400 UTC
- The GOES-9 science schedule for November, 1995 calls for extensive 3-minute interval imaging of CONUS.
- Snow fields in South Dakota at 1845 UTC, 26 October 1995.
The GOES-9 visible image was reprocessed with simple image-enhancement tools to present the fine-scale features of the river valleys north and south of the Dakota-Nebraska border. There are clouds above the snow field which cast shadows, including cirrus contrails so thin that you cannot see the clouds themselves, only the long, thin linear shadows across the snow field.
- Hurricane Sebastien
- Hurricane Roxanne
- GOES-9 on drugs -- wiggly imaging while thruster-firing on 2 October 95.
The South American image from the slewing spacecraft is skewed-up compared to the corresponding image from GOES-8.
- Hurricane nursery viewed from GOES-8 and -9, just after sunrise southwest of the Cape Verde islands, 1 October 95. Not only are the perspectives different, but so are the relative brightness of reflected sunlight off the cloud tops.
- Hurricane Marilyn
- Hurricane Luis
- NOAA's science tests of GOES-9 in the first 2 weeks of September.
- GOES-8 and GOES-9 view scenic Utah simultaneously on the afternoon of September 13, 1995. The differences in perspective for 75W and 90W are obvious, and you can also see that GOES-9's visible channel is brighter than GOES-8's.
- Hurricane Felix viewed by GOES-9 on Thursday, 17 August 1995, at 4 km resolution, 2 km resolution, and
1 km resolution.
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GOES-9 rapid scans of South Florida for 12 hours on July 2nd (3.5 MByte MPEG, 360 frames!!) -- first try a short preview movie (250 kbytes, 30 frames).
If you prefer Quicktime's superior playability, try the same series of GOES-9 rapid scans of South Florida for 12 hours on July 2nd (7.5 MByte MOV, 360 frames!!) -- first try a short preview movie (250 kbytes, 30 frames).
These are the first good movie version from a data-set which covers all the Southeastern USA in all the Imager channels for all the daylight hours of 2 July 1995.
- GOES-9 image after emissivity correction, on 31 August 1995. There remains only a faint east-west gradient in the apparent brightness of outer space, and a faint low-frequency ripple running diagonally across the lower right-hand side.
- Hurricane Felix Cape Hatteras on Thursday, 19 August 1995, as a multi-spectral color composite.
- Big full-earth images for all 5 channels on GOES-9, for
visible,
3.9 microns,
6.7 microns,
11 microns,
12 microns, taken at midday on 11 July 1995.
The mid- and long-wave infrared channels make the eastern side of the images warmer than the western side, since a software correction for the angle-dependent emissivity of the scan mirror is not being used yet.
©COPYRIGHT AND WARRANTY DISCLAIMER NOTICE
This information resource was created by one irresponsible employee of NASA.
It is in the public domain and permission is granted to use, duplicate, modify and redistribute it.
Please give credit for the satellite images to NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center.
NASA and its employees provide absolutely NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
mailto:
Dennis.F.Chesters@nasa.gov
GOES Project
