[HN Gopher] Show HN: Near-realtime cloud maps for weather visual...
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Show HN: Near-realtime cloud maps for weather visualisation, 3D
models and more
This is a service I've built to provide equirectangular cloud maps
of the whole Earth, updated every 3 hours, for free. It's based on
infrared and visible light data from EUMETSAT, processed to enhance
the clouds and try to reduce the impact of surface temperatures on
the final image. I built it because it's surprisingly hard to find
these kinds of images in a format that's useful to developers and
hobbyists. I was building a 3D ISS tracker and wanted to include
live clouds but couldn't find anything good, so I got sidetracked,
and here we are.
Author : matteason
Score : 60 points
Date : 2023-11-16 13:40 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| cdchn wrote:
| I hate to admit my first thought was "Cool something to help
| visualize my AWS account."
| matteason wrote:
| I know, I'm sorry! It's very hard to name something like this
| without including "no, not _that_ kind of cloud"
| solardev wrote:
| Cloud cover map, maybe?
| arriu wrote:
| Awesome! Thanks for putting this together.
|
| Is there any way to get non-processed image data? Without the
| nighttime adjustments?
| matteason wrote:
| You can grab the source data from EUMETSAT directly - the URLs
| are all listed in https://github.com/matteason/live-cloud-
| maps/blob/3be662483c...
|
| The products used are:
|
| "Geostationary Ring IR10.8 mm Image - Multimission" -
| https://navigator.eumetsat.int/product/EO:EUM:DAT:0330
|
| "Geostationary Ring Dust RGB - Multimission" -
| https://navigator.eumetsat.int/product/EO:EUM:DAT:0334
|
| "Geostationary Ring Natural Colour RGB - Multimission"
| https://navigator.eumetsat.int/product/EO:EUM:DAT:0336
| treebeard5440 wrote:
| Came here for AWS - still left happy discovering it was about
| real clouds
| catapart wrote:
| Man, that is so damn cool! Thanks!
|
| Don't have any particular use case for this, myself, but its open
| accessibility (a simple url) makes it a drop in solution for all
| kinds of environments, including Unreal and Blender. And just
| based on what those two apps can do with it, I bet there are a
| bunch of others that can do some other really awesome stuff with
| it, too!
| matteason wrote:
| Thank you! Yeah I've tried to make it as no-nonsense as
| possible. I'm planning to add some other handy bits around it
| (eg a txt/JSON file giving the last update time) that might be
| useful for some types of project.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Looks great!
|
| Just one note: there is a very faint shimmer of a white line on
| the left and right edges of this image which thus becomes more
| visible when wrapping around a model
|
| https://camo.githubusercontent.com/1a35eff2061fe218236f872f9...
| matteason wrote:
| Thanks! Yes you're right, it does become a lot more pronounced
| when it's used on a sphere. I'll find a nice way to fill in the
| gaps that doesn't just make it more obvious
| loxias wrote:
| Looks Fantastic! I love stuff like this, and am jealous of Planet
| employees ;-)
|
| Wonder how it compares with the GOES raw data, and also I wonder
| if a hybrid viewer would have any aesthetic benefits.
|
| Do share your "live 3d ISS viewer" when done. I can imagine
| myself getting a smile or two from such a thing. :)
| matteason wrote:
| You can see the source IR image (which incorporates GOES data)
| here: https://navigator.eumetsat.int/product/EO:EUM:DAT:0330
|
| It took quite a while to work out how to process it to get a
| level of realism I was happy with. IR is tricky because the
| same level of grey could either be warm cloud or cold land, so
| just discarding anything below a certain level to try and get
| rid of the land also loses a lot of cloud detail. I've combined
| that IR map with another false-colour image which lets me
| recover some of that detail, then I'm also extracting clouds
| from a true-colour image which restores more detail for areas
| in daylight.
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(page generated 2023-11-16 23:02 UTC)