Unidata IDV Workshop for version 3.0u2 > Accessing and Displaying Data > Displaying Satellite and Level III Radar Imagery
3.3.0 Loading Satellite Imagery
Satellite imagery from geostationary and polar orbiting satellites
is available through a network of servers supported by Unidata.
Most of the imagery available on these servers covers the
North America region. These servers use the Abstract Data
Distribution Environment (ADDE) protocol.
First, we'll load in some visible imagery from the Bow Echo
Case Study that we used in the Gridded Data section of
the workshop.
- If other displays and data are already loaded, select the
menu item
or the
icon in the toolbar to clear them out.
- Open the
Data Source Chooser. 
Click on the Images tab.
- We'll load in some visible satellite imagery.
In the
Server: selector, choose
adde.ucar.edu.
In the Dataset: selector, choose
CCS039. If either of these is
not in the list, just type them in. When you have made
your selections, click the Connect
button.
- The IDV connects to the specified server and retrieves
the types of images available in the dataset. From the
Image Type: selector, choose
the 1 km GOES-8 Visible type.
- You can either load in the last "n" images, or
you can select by time. For this exercise, we want to select
a subset of all available times, so click on the
Absolute times radio button.
When this option is selected, the server is queried for a set of
available times for that type and these are listed in the
Times: panel. Select
the 7 images from 1998-06-29 16:15:00Z
through 1998-06-29 22:15:00Z. Be sure that
the Create display checkbox is selected
and click the Add Source button.
- Change the background maps using the
Default Background Maps Control.
Turn on the
North & Central America and
the US Interstate Highways maps.
Make sure all other maps are off. When you are finished,
go back to the View Window.
- Use the menu to
overlay some place names. Change the color of the location
text to be white using the display control's
menu.
- Start the animation. In this loop, you will see a large
super cell thunderstorm develop over Iowa during this period.
Stop the animation and show the 20:15Z image.
- Zoom in over the super cell in eastern Iowa
- This is visible imagery at 1 kilometer resolution. You can
use the
Pixel Sampling slider
to see what the image would look like at a lower resolution.
- Move the slider to 5 to see the difference
an image at 6 km resolution would look like.
- Return the slider back to 0 before proceeding to
the next exercise.
- Do not clear this display.
Unidata IDV Workshop for version 3.0u2 > Accessing and Displaying Data > Displaying Satellite and Level III Radar Imagery
