Snapshots from GEO's
2nd Symposium

Held in the National Space Centre, Leicester
April 30, 2005

By the time the first presentation started, every seat in the lecture room was taken and for much of the day it was standing room only.

The Speakers

This year's GEO Symposium proved even better than the 2004 event with nearly 70 weather satellite enthusiasts attending. The ambitious program kept everyone busy throughout the day with an eclectic mix of lectures, workshops and short breaks for discussion. If there was one major complaint it was simply that there was not nearly enough time to satisfy everyone.

The day opened with a talk from Mike Grocott of Callington Space Centre. Although Mike's theme centred on education, the point that came through most strongly was the role of their MSG-1 groundstations in really capturing the imagination and enthusiasm of their students.

Mike was followed by EUMETSAT's Training Consultant Gordon Bridge whose illustrated talk explained how the various image channels from Meteosat-8 can be coloured and combined in meaningful ways: to distinguish snow from cloud and fog; to highlight atmospheric dust; to detect sulphurous fumes from volcanos, and much more.

The morning session continued with a presentation from David Taylor who launched the new GeoSatSignal 5 program with multi-channel RGB capabilities for Meteosat-8 data. David then continued by looking at how EUMETCast will be developed to support both HRPT image data from the existing NOAA polar orbiters this year and the METOP satellites due to be launched starting next year.

Finally, rounding off procedings before breaking for lunch, Ferdinand Valk took the stage with a short talk on the B15a iceberg. This was accompanied by some amazing movies he had created from MODIS images, clearly illustrating just how the giant iceberg had behaved throughout the previous two years.

The afternoon session opened with a vibrant discussion of the American weather satellite program from Ed Murashie who had come over from the States for the Symposium. Ed detailed the historical events leading up to the very first TIROS satellite then discussed the NOAA polar and geostationary programmes before rounding things off with a look to the future, when civilian and military operations will come together in the new NPOESS programme.

Rob Alblas from Werkgroep Kunstmanen was next and explained in detail how his alternative software for capturing and imaging from Meteosat-8 operates. Rob works with the LINUX operating system and had planned to demonstrate this. Alas, just days previously his LINUX box had failed on him and he had to regress to Windows instead.

The day's final presentation came from Fred van den Bosch who explained some of the organisational techiques he has evolved which allow him to run his MSG station completely automatically. In addition to Meteosat-8 images, synoptic data can also be downloaded and charts created by adding this information to satellite images—all without user intervention.

The Workshops

Many thanks to Cecilia and David Taylor for allowing us to use many of their photographs to illustrate this page