This is a tiny program that scrapes and downloads images from NOAA's GOES East or West satellites. As of December 18, 2017, GOES-13 has been retired from the GOES east position and been replaced with GOES-16. This program is an updated version of GOES-13 that works with GOES-16 and GOES-17. The point of this project is to be able to keep a locally stored database of these images, so you can look back further than the image limit of the online directory list.
NOAA's site with the images can be found here.
- Obtain a compiled jar file: See the "Building from source" instructions or head over the releases page.
- cd to the directory containing the jar file. The images will also be downloaded in this directory.
- run the JarFileName.jar with
java -jar JarFileName.jar \[OPTIONS\]
. - The images will appear in a newly created "./imgs/" directory.
-b,--band <arg> selects the color/band (run --bands for
list of types) (GeoColor)
--bands prints a list of bands
--beforedownloadtime <arg> the time (ms) between downloading the
list of images and actually downloading
them (600000)
--checksleeptime <arg> the time (ms) between checking if sleep
time has passed (600000)
--downloadbatchsize <arg> the number of images to download at the
same time (4)
--help prints this help message
--infotechnique <arg> the strategy for gaining information on
images (directorylist)
--infotechniques prints a list of strategies for gaining
information on images
-o,--output <arg> selects the output directory for the
images (imgs/)
-r,--resolution <arg> selects the image resolution to download
(run --resolutions for list of
resolutions) (339x339)
--resolutions prints a list of resolutions
-s,--satellite <arg> the satellite (run --satellites for list
of satellites) (GOES16)
--satellites prints a list of satellites
--sleeptime <arg> the time (ms) between downloading images
(7200000)
-t,--type <arg> the type of image (run --types for list
of types) (FD)
--types prints a list of types
Band Description
GeoColor True Color daytime, multispectral IR at night
1 0.47 µm, Blue - Visible
2 0.64 µm, Red - Visible
3 0.86 µm, Veggie - Near IR
4 1.37 µm, Cirrus - Near IR
5 1.60 µm, Snow/Ice - Near IR
6 2.20 µm, Cloud Particle - Near IR
7 3.90 µm, Shortwave Window - IR
8 6.20 µm, Upper-Level Water Vapor - IR
9 6.90 µm, Mid-Level Water Vapor - IR
10 7.30 µm, Lower-level Water Vapor - IR
11 8.40 µm, Cloud Top - IR
12 9.60 µm, Ozone - IR
13 10.3 µm, Clean Longwave Window - IR
14 11.2 µm, Longwave Window - IR
15 12.3 µm, Dirty Longwave Window - IR
16 13.3 µm, CO2 Longwave - IR
FD (Full Disk)
Resolutions Bands
339x339 all
678x678 all
1808x1808 all
5424x5424 all
10848x10848 GeoColor, 1-3, 5
21696x21696 2
CONUS (contiguous United States)
Resolutions Bands
416x250 all
625x375 all
1250x750 all
2500x1500 all
5000x3000 GeoColor, 1-3, 5
10000x6000 2
SECTOR/* (Regional sector view)
Resolutions Bands
300x300 all
600x600 all
1200x1200 GeoColor, 1-3, 5
Satellite Description
GOES16 GOES-16 / GOES-East
GOES17 GOES-17 / GOES-West
Type Description
FD Full Disk (Entire Western Hemisphere)
CONUS contiguous United States
SECTOR/pnw Regional sector view: Pacific Northwest
SECTOR/nr Regional sector view: Northern Rockies
SECTOR/umv Regional sector view: Upper Mississippi Valley
SECTOR/cgl Regional sector view: Great Lakes
SECTOR/ne Regional sector view: Northeast
SECTOR/psw Regional sector view: Pacific Southwest
SECTOR/sr Regional sector view: Southern Rockies
SECTOR/sp Regional sector view: Southern Plains
SECTOR/smv Regional sector view: Southern Mississippi Valley
SECTOR/se Regional sector view: Southeast
The images are labeled with a timestamp from NOAA. The timestamps are in UTC time.
The format of these timestamps are YYYYDDDHHMM
. YYYY
is the 4 digit year, DDD
is the
number of days that have past since the start of the year (Jan 1 is 001). HHMM
is the hour and minute.
An example might be 20181132152
. This timestamp was from the year 2018, day #113 and at 21:52 UTC,
or April 23, 2018 at 21:52 UTC.
This program is copyrighted to Will Bresnahan or n9Mtq4 under the MIT License. More info in the LICENSE File.
- Clone or download the source code
- Extract the code if you downloaded the zip file
- cd to the directory with the code
- Either run "./gradlew build" on unix systems or "gradlew.bat build" on windows
- Your shiny new jar will be located in "build/libs/"
If you wish to make a timelapse from this programs output, here is an ffmpeg command that I recommend (for 5424x5424px), change the bitrate (-b:v) as needed.
ffmpeg -framerate 30 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' -c:v libx264 -b:v 20MB -maxrate 20MB -bufsize 100MB video.mp4