Meteosat-8 (or MSG-1 as it was known during trials) is the first of the new European geostationary weather satellites. MSG is an acronym for Meteosat Second Generation. Meteosat-8 served from 2003 to 2007, and is now the standby and Rapid Scan satellite, with Meteosat-9 as the prime satellite since April 2007. Meteosat-9 has twelve sensor channels rather than three, higher spatial resolution, much higher visible channel resolution, better thermal accuracy, and double the frequency of image delivery than previous Meteosat satellites; all of which necessitates a change to the data transmission method. Meteosat-9 (MSG-2) has replaced Meteosat 7, and the WEFAX and PDUS transmissions have now ceased. The data from Meteosat-9 is purely digital, and is delivered as a set of a number of compressed files per image. There is no WEFAX transmission from Meteosat-9. As there are now twelve channels delivered four times an hour, the total data rate is some 1.5GB per hour, 15000 files per day, requiring significant management on your computer.
Please note that you will need a licence from EUMETSAT to receive some of this data, but UK amateurs should see the GEO Quarterly for more details. They are unlikely to have to pay licence charges. In addition to Meteosat-9 data and other geostationary weather satellite data, you will get access to the upper-atmosphere ATOVS data and Sea-Ice data. These are processed from polar orbiting satellites and added to the data stream.
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