Contains:  Star trails
Geostationary Weather Satellites - Himawari 8 and Himawari 9, Bruce Rohrlach

Geostationary Weather Satellites - Himawari 8 and Himawari 9

Geostationary Weather Satellites - Himawari 8 and Himawari 9, Bruce Rohrlach

Geostationary Weather Satellites - Himawari 8 and Himawari 9

Equipment

Loading...

Acquisition details

Loading...

Description

The two Himawari (“sunflower”) geostationary satellites (Himawari 8 and Himawari 9) operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) support weather forecasting, tropical cyclone tracking, and meteorology research.

By allowing the telescope to rotate with the earth (by turning the star-tracking motors off) stars appear as streaks on the CCD chip due to earth’s rotation, but geostationary satellites appear as points of light that become increasingly visible as the exposure time increases. The 2 points of light (Himawari 8 and 9) are in geostationary orbit directly above the equator just north of Jayapura in Irian Jaya (West Papua). They move through space at 3.05km/sec, at the same speed as earth’s rotational velocity and hense are stationary relative to the ground.

The Himawari satellites capture the weather images for Australia that we see on the BOM website. The inset is a whole disk image captured by Himawari 8. These 2 satellites are located ~2.9 earth diameters above the equator, so the view these 2 geostationary satellites have of the earth is broadly equivalent to looking at a basketball held at arms length. In the inset image, the black and yellow rings show the location of my viewing position (Melbourne) and the location of the 2 geostationary satellites above the equator north of Jayapura.

Comments

Histogram

Geostationary Weather Satellites - Himawari 8 and Himawari 9, Bruce Rohrlach