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Thursday, March 28 2024 @ 04:45 pm EDT

Zooming In On Our Weather

General NewsUse the weather satellites as the local meteorlogists do. Make your monitor, monitor your weather.

We as amateur astronomers watch the weather above us as carefully as our local weathermen. After all, our hobby depends on how clear the skies are. Use the site listed here to pull up an image from the GOES weather satellite and the instructions in the rest of the story to make your own decisions about whether to set up tonight, or NOT!

http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/goeseastconus.html

AOAS member Dale Hall is a wealth of information when it comes to astronomy, or what it takes to get the most out of our hobby. Dale recently sent me a web site address that gives me a visible satellite image of the east coast of the continental US. Since I've always preferred this type of image to make my decisions about when I will or won't set up to observe, it has become something that I now use almost exclusively to decide my observing times.

The site listed will take you to the current image of the GOES weather satelitte, where you'll find options available to help with your decisions. One of the most important functions of the site is the "Animate Image" button. The default number of images is 6, which will give you the last six images up to the present image. Click on that button and let the system set up an animation of the motions and movements of the weather systems in our area. Slow connection speeds may take a couple of minutes to load, but fast connection speeds will be nearly instantaneous. The user has the options of slowing down or speeding up the rate at which the animation plays back. Play with this a bit.

Now try increasing the number of images to run through the animation loop. You have many optional numbers of images, and the "30" image option is the maximum. Depending on what time of day you access the system, you may be able to see the "shadow of night" as it passes across the face of the Earth at our coordinates. Depending on your connection speed again, it may take from several seconds to several minutes to load the full 30 frames for animation. When the system is ready, you'll see the last several hours of movement and motions of the clouds in our area of the country come to life before your very eyes. You have the option of choosing to decrease the size of the image you view which can make some difference in how long the loop takes to load. Other options are also available, and I'd encourage you to play with these options to see how it may affect your images and playback.

Now, scroll down to the bottom of this page. Here you'll find an option which will "zoom in on Ft Smith/Van Buren".The boxes you see for this option ask you to input numbers to find your location. Type into the "X"box 200. Then type into the "Y" box 194. Now click on the button to choose this magnified image area and see what Garrett, Clint and Josh show us on KFSM TV5 when they sometimes show roughly the same image area to tell us what we can expect for clearing or for approaching storms. The image is quite striking and it has become one of my favorite things to look at to choose when, or even where I set up to observe.

This is just a little way to help when making your own decisions. Between the animations and the zoom capability, it also becomes an entertainment site. Logon, find the site, animate or zoom-in, and above all, have fun!
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