NOAA-21 First Light imagery via Direct Broadcast
The VIIRS (Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on-board NOAA-21 (launched in November 2022) is now sending data to Earth. (Here is the NOAA Satellite Tweet announcing this landmark occasion!). Direct Broadcast users can also view NOAA-21 data now; the image above was downloaded and processed using the latest Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP) at CIMSS. (Users must also update their antenna demodulator to allow receipt of NOAA-21 data!).
The VIIRS instrument has great resolution, as shown in the subsected views below of Long Island (partially hidden by thin cirrus, Florida, and ice-covered Lake Winnipeg. NOAA-21 will be undergoing testing and evaluation over the next months prior to being declared operational.
Direct Broadcast users will note that NOAA-21 and Suomi NPP conflict; that is, users with a single antenna must choose to download data from one or the other.
The image below, courtesy Kathy Strabala and Liam Gumley, CIMSS, shows an image similar to the NOAA Satellite Tweet. The image below was created with SDR data from NOAA CLASS, and those data were processed with CSPP’s Polar2Grid (v 2.3) software (downloadable here).
