NOAA Satellite Receiving Station
Details on images and receiving equipment used
The images are raw APT (Automatic Picture Transmission) data from the
NOAA 12, 14 & 15
polar-orbiting satellites, received in
Lower Hutt, NEW ZEALAND (41.2°S 174.9°E).
They are not rectified in any way, and have no grid or latitude/longitude markings.
However, the New Zealand land-mass can often be clearly seen, especially for those images
with maximum altitudes greater than about 40°.
Passes from lower altitude angles are often noisy! On occasions, Tasmania and the southeastern
extremities of Australia may be seen!
Each image contains two pictures. At night-time both these pictures are infra-red (IR),
while by day one of the pictures is visible - just as you would see with the naked eye.
The advantage with the IR pictures, which measure temperature, is that they can be seen at any hour,
night or day.
For IR pictures, white areas show high cloud tops, grey areas show middle and lower cloud tops, while
the darkest areas are cloud-free, showing either land or sea.
Equipment used to receive the images
Amiga CD32
with SX32Pro
expansion (50MHz 68030, 18Mb RAM, 1.2Gb HD)
Martelec Communications Systems'
MSR50 Receiver, MSH20 137 MHz Crossed Dipole Antenna,
MSK30 Low Noise 137 MHz Preamplifier, AmigaSat v4.0 decoder and software.
Images scaled down to 800x340 and compressed to 75% JPEG format using
ImageFX v2.6 on the Amiga.
Equipment owned and operated by Trevor McGavin
, Lower Hutt, NEW ZEALAND.
Pictures of the satellite receiving station and antenna
Back to NOAA satellite imagery