GOES-13 will cease transmission on 3 January 2018 [Update: 8 January]
GOES-13 Visible (0.63 µm) Image, 1745 UTC on 2 January 2018 (Click to enlarge)
The GOES-13 Satellite, operational as GOES-East from April 2010 through December 2017 (with a notable interruption) will be turned off sometime after 1500 UTC on Wednesday 3 January 2018. (Update: due to an impending East Coast winter storm, GOES-13 deactivation was postponed to 8 January)
The visible Full Disk image above, from 1745 UTC on 2 January 2018, is one of the last fully illuminated visible image the satellite will process. (The first processed full disk visible image, from 22 June 2006, can be viewed here.)
On 28 December 2017, GOES-13 imagery included a view of the Moon, as shown here (and zoomed in here). Future GOES-East imagery from GOES-16 will not include images of the Moon. GOES-16 will scan the moon when it is near the horizon (and there are occasional GOES-16 mesoscale sectors placed over the Moon for calibration purposes). However, GOES-16 imagery is remapped to Earth points before being broadcast to the public. The Moon (happily) is not on the Earth and its points will not be remapped.
Thank you GOES-13 for your long years of service. A full-resolution version of the image above is available here.
