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All-sky Cameras & UNSW NOAA Satellite Maps
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The UNSW APT group hosts a page
where NOAA Satellite images of the SSO
region are regularly downloaded. These maps are
processed to provide coloured highlighting of rain potential cloud. There are
also links to all-sky monitors at SSO
- UNSW
APT all-sky-camera images of the whole sky
at video frame rates. It is excellent for seeing the sky quality when the moon is up,
is even useful when the moon is down, with the galactic plane being clearly
detectable when the sky is clear.
- Siding Spring CONCAM
which integrates every 2 minutes (when operating) and is excellent
for seeing sky quality when the moon is down. Unfortunately (as at Feb 2007)
it has been very unreliable in recent times.
AAT Night Assistant Weather Resources
The
AAT Night Assistants have collected together a large collection
of useful resources when observing at the AAT, including links to external sites with weather data,
AAT meterological data, and Dome Air data. Note that this site may
not be accessible to you from outside the AAO's network.
Especially useful are the Latest Map.
and
the GIF
movie of the last day's images. The data comes from the GMS-5
satellite,
the images from which can also be found on a number of other servers.
These
images are updated every 3 hours (though the 15:30 (UT) images
are
usually absent).
Useful are the processed GMS-5
images of
Australia, which are updated approximately every 6 hours,
and are
in a slightly different format from the JCU images.
Also useful are the Bureau's synoptic charts,
(both current and 24 hour forecast), and the Bureau's forecasts for
NSW. (The "Notes on the Weather" and "District Forecasts - Western
Inland" are most useful.).
The Bureau also provides a page of AAT
specific products for us. These contain some useful rain radar
images, satellite images, and forecasts of conditions on the mountain.
You can get the password and account name to access these when in the
control room at the AAT.
Weatherzone has some really useful maps, including a large
sample of rain radars (larger than the Bureau's sample page above,
though all
static), on 228km size maps. Try the NSW
map. Also very cool are the lightning tracker maps (see NSW
map).
You may need to register to access these. Registration has been free in the past.
The AAT archives its meteorological data, and you can see it at http://site.aao.gov.au/AATdatabase/met.html,
along with a bunch of other weather links.
Weather forecasts, reports and images from the ABC Weather pages.
GMS-5 Satellite Images
The GMS-5 Satellite was operated by the
Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA). It was launched in the spring of 1995. GMS-5 currently
broadcasted on a roughly hourly schedule, stationed at 140E longitude in
four channels: a visible channel at 1.25 km spatial resolution; a
thermal infrared (11 micron)
channel with 5 km resolution; a thermal infrared (12 micron) "split
window"
channel with 5 km resolution; and a thermal infrared (6.5 micron) water
vapor channel with 5 km resolution.
However, GMS5 became non-operational on May 22, 2003
and the GOES9 satellite has been used to provide backup images of the western
Pacific region.
Images of the Australian
region ("SE Quadrant") can be obtained direct from JMA.
Please make sure you credit JMA (rather than the locations
redistributing their images) if you in turn redistribute GMS-5 data
in any form with the following: "the cloud imagery was originally
obtained via GMS of JMA". Images from GMS-5 and GOES appear on weather
sites all over the globe, in a variety of formats. Here are a few
useful places to get them.
Other Weather Servers
These come and go - a few which are useful and have stayed are
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