Part 2—Explore GOES Images

Step 1 –
Navigate to the GOES Images

Navigate to the Marshall Space Flight Center's Earth Science Office website.

This site has current images from GOES East and West satellites as well as full disk images of both the eastern and western hemispheres. This is a good site to first view GOES images because it offers straightforward ways to interact with a wide variety of images.

Step 2 –
Open the GOES East Visible Light Image

  1. Click on the GOES East 1 km Visible light image (top row, left) to open it in a new window. When the new window with the image opens, you'll see an image and a set of controls that allows you to manipulate the image. You will explore these controls in the next step. Take a moment to examine the image.
    1 goes visible


  2. Near the top-left of the image that opens, notice the UTC time and Local Time.
    2 goes image

    3. UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time, the time at zero degrees longitude, which is used by scientists and others as a single global time. Other names for the time at zero degrees longitude are Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and Zulu (Z) Time. You will often see a Z in the upper-left corner of GOES images, indicating Zulu or UTC time. Once you calculate the time difference between UTC and your local time, you'll be able to determine the local time for GOES image.

Step 3 –
Select Modifications to the Image

This image shows the controls for manipulating a single goes image.
Keep the Single Image (the default) option selected. Modify one or more of the default settings, and then click on the image to implement the changes and zoom in at that location.

  • Width and Height (to change the size and shape of the Output image)
  • Quality, in percent (to vary the resolution of the Output image)
  • Zoom Factor (to control the amount of zoom)
  • Map (to change from State lines to County, Lat/Lon or None)
  • Map Color (to control the color of the map lines)
  • Previous image (to view any one of the 15 previous images)
  • Enter X location or Y location to identify the pixel (location) on which the zoomed image will center, regardless of where one clicks on the image. The upper-left corner of a GOES image is at pixel 0,0.)
  • Extract Sub-image (An alternative way to zoom into the GOES image when X and Y coordinates have been selected.

Step 4 –
Click on a Location to Zoom In

This is a zoomed in image of the Louisiana area which shows county lines.
Example image.
Choose a location on the image and click it to zoom in on that place. The example image (left) resulted from setting the Map option on County, keeping the Zoom Factor on High and clicking the GOES image on Louisiana.

The settings you select are implemented when you click on the image. In order to zoom in to another location or change other options, click your browser's Back button to go back to the original image and controls.