About
Maintainer
This website is maintained and operated by Christos Makrypodis (Makry.net).
Operation
Christos has a satellite dish set up permanently at the GK-2A weather satellite. His receiver setup which he operates consits of a Kraken RF Discovery Dish with an L-Band feed.
He uses the satdump application to decode GK-2A's signals.
Origins of this website
Christos obtained the funds (~$450 AUD) to purchase the equipment necessary for this project by selling his Apple Watch on eBay, as well as by using some cash he had lying around.
False Colour
The images on this website are colourised using the sanchez compositor. This is because GK-2A only transmits IR10.5 (10.5 µm infrared, appears monochrome) images via LRIT (Low-Rate Image Transmission). To do this, a coloured, cloudless map is combined with the IR image for a better visualisation. Sanchez does this by reprojecting the IR data and blending the cloud textures dynamically over the underlay map based on pixel brightness and transparency values.
This night underlay is used with sanchez when it is September-February and the time is 09:30-20:00 UTC (7:30PM-06:00AM AEST), or when it is March-August and between 07:30-20:30 UTC (5:30PM-06:30AM AEST). Otherwise, this day underlay is used.
To see the original IR images, use the filebrowser and navigate to the corresponding directory. You will find the IR image as well as a product.cbor file, which through the viewer function on satdump can be used in combination with the IR image to; get exact temperature readings, apply Look-up-tables (LUTs)
About the GK-2A satellite
The GEO-KOMPSAT-2A (GK-2A) satellite is a geostationary satellite launched and operated by National Meteorological Satellite Centre of the Korean Meteorlogical Administration. It was launched on the 4th of December, 2018. It is located at 0° latitudinally (it is above the equator) and 128.2°E longitudinally. It broadcasts LRIT on 1692.14 Mhz (1.69214 GHz, L-Band).
GK-2A covers the following geographical footprint:
(Credit VKSDR)
