Contributions – open-weather

2025-02-07 11:21:32

Sasha Engelmann

Between Queens and Schilling buildings, Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom

Yesterday the pressure over London climbed to 1034 hPa. As I cycled to London Bridge, it felt like anything in the air was being pushed out, even flung out, of the air above the city. I could see a dark cloud in the distance but as I cycled its shape got smaller and smaller, fleeing. The temperature had also dropped several degrees. Everything felt to be in motion, an intensity of forces. As I left the house at 6:30am today, the coldness remained but the pressure had dropped. During my lecture in Atmospheres: Nature, Culture, Politics, the rain suddenly arrived, pelting the classroom’s porous windows with great urgency. ‘Hello rain!’ I said in my lecture. During a break I cracked a window and observed two muntjack deer grazing placidly on the field below.

2025-02-06 19:12:00

Received with a remote SDR

2025-02-06 11:44:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-02-05 09:56:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-02-04 12:04:03

deptford high street park, uk

Today in the UK, the weather was cold and grey, but while experiencing this, we were receiving ticking sounds from a satellite and converting them into an image. The resulting image of the sky was striking and different from the one outside, blending technology and nature. The climate crisis is evident in my community with more erratic weather patterns, storms, and rising pollution. The contrast between the natural world and the technology used to interpret it highlights both the challenges and potential solutions we face in addressing climate change.

2025-02-04 11:59:25

Deyi Xu, Guo Zhen, Somin Yu, Weiting Diao, Yu-Hsin Hsiao, Ziyi Yang

Near the Deptford Bridge DLR station, United Kingdom

Cloudy, just like the typical British weather, also a bit cold. And I did see heavy clouds in the image.

2025-02-04 11:58:26

Broadway Fields, UK

Cloudy, windy, a little bit cold. A long cloud through UK.

2025-02-04 07:45:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-02-03 10:21:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-02-02 18:15:43

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

Having accidentally left out my aerial and SDR for two nights I feared my kit was dead. Having left the kit to dry for a good 24 hours I tried two passes this morning that had such bad interference I felt annoyingly gloomy even with a day of blue skies and sun. However after some online forum research and some kind soul giving me some tips for testing it looks like my precious kit is okay. The Moon and Venus are neighbours tonight. 3.7 degrees Celcius 74% humidity 1015 hPa/mb

2025-02-02 10:34:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-02-02 10:21:25

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

"Has your aerial gotten bigger?" a woman chasing a brown curly haired dog asked me. "Maybe its just how you're holding it!" she added. We laughed as her dog ran away. I tried to remember where I had met her before. After a somewhat stormy week, the air is crisp and the sky is a clear blue. The pressure is around 1023 hPa, suggesting clear weather for the rest of the day. I notice that bulbs are already poking up through the grass on the edge of the park. A 2022 study at Cambridge showed that flowers in the UK are blooming an average of one month earlier than they used to, and this is putting them out of sync with the insects that they need to reproduce, and that need them for food. As of yesterday, the Palisades fire in Los Angeles is 100% contained. Checking the Calfire maps every day, often multiple times per day, since Tuesday January 7th was a ritual that I hope I will never have to repeat.

2025-02-01 22:44:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-02-01 11:54:00

Leipzig, Germany

2025-02-01 11:07:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-31 11:20:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-31 10:45:00

Landaff Fields, Cardiff , UK

NOAA 19 clear sunny blue sky with 7pmh winds. Keeping the antenna close to our bodies helps to receive a clearer signal. Standing in the sun with our eyes closed and listening to the sound is meditative. Fascinating to see the image and imagine ourselves as a body in a green field, but also a global body in this vast sky

2025-01-30 11:33:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-29 11:35:49

Sasha Engelmann

Royal Holloway University , United Kingdom

My colleagues joke that January has been a sodden, dark, misty tunnel. On a decaying picnic table next to the Physics Department, I notice bright orange fungi, like colourful jelly strung across the peeling blue paint. It reminds me of a kind of fungi I once saw in the temperate rainforest at the bank of the Puget Sound, near Seattle.

2025-01-28 09:57:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-28 08:22:43

Testing, testing. Same antenna position, same satellite, different dipoles and a lower altitude pass of 54º. Vienna Inner City weather station at 3pm: temp. 16.8°C relative humidity 52% wind South, 29 km/h precipitation [last hour] 0 mm Sun [last hour] 19% air pressure 997.0 hPa Source: www.zamg.ac.at/cms/de/wetter/wetterwerte-analysen/wien

2025-01-27 18:29:14

I am experimenting with different DIY antenna set-ups in an effort to reduce the electromagnetic noise that silently engulfs my apartment's balcony. Its origin remains a mystery. At dusk, as I wedged the wooden pole supporting a new copper v-dipole into an umbrella stand, I could hear a blackbird's distinct evening song. Like me, the bird seemed awakened, and perhaps confused, by the warm weather. It is spring-like and yet we are January. Yesterday, the air in the woods smelled moist and leafy as if living things were stirring, breathing. The days have been mostly dry, with broken sunshine. Tomorrow afternoon, the temperature is forecast to reach 15 Celsius. If true, that will be a whopping 20 degree increase on last week. The photograph on the left was taken on 18 January, the photograph on the right was taken on 26 January. There appear to be lots of fresh moles hills in the photograph on the right, although it is impossible to say as the framing is different.

2025-01-27 07:53:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-27 06:47:32

Complexo da Maré, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

We can see the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil completely covered in clouds.

2025-01-26 19:09:09

Mersin Tarsus, Turkey

2025-01-26 17:54:58

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

After Storm Éowyn. More wind is on it's way and the sky tonight has layers of higher denser cloud with lower and thinner fast moving cloud that race by across the faces of Jupiter and Venus. The breeze is getting stronger and by the time the pass has finished the clouds part like theatre curtains to reveal more of the planets and the winter constellations of Orion and Taurus. The idea of grabbing my telescope briefly floats in my head but it's quickly squashed by the processed pass of NOAA 15 more where I can see more weather from the west and pushing up from the south. Like the life span of a cloud the moment has gone. 5 degrees Celcius 88% humidity 974 mb

2025-01-26 11:06:49

Steve Engelmann

Santa Monica, United States

I went to the top of a parking garage in downtown Santa Monica in the hopes of having a clear view of the sky. I didn't get as clear of an image as I hoped for. Perhaps some interference from the surrounding buildings, etc. Today was the first meaningful rain event for almost 9 months. This has been the driest start of the rain season since records began in 1877. Not a surprise when 3 weeks ago dry winds conspired in the development of six fires burning simultaneously around Los Angeles. 28 lives were lost and over 16 thousand homes destroyed. The human fingerprint is all over this event from the initial ignition, the preparation and response from the fire department, housing development within a flammable ecosystem, and ultimately, the climate crisis. A lot of finger pointing from the new president to the individual. Will there be any meaningful change? This will happen again.

2025-01-26 10:21:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-25 12:25:52

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

The aftermath of Storm Éowyn is a beautifully calm, sunny and clear day in London. The storm hasn't left much of a trace- there were barely any high winds in the Southeast, whereas the Met Office issued a very rare 'red' weather warning for Scotland and Northern Ireland, where winds surpassed 100mph, millions were left without power and roads were damaged. Between 2011 and 2024, there were 'red warnings' on just 19 days. During the same time, 521 days saw amber warnings while 1,922 had yellow warnings. One of the recent red warnings was in July 2022 during the 'severe heatwave' that raised temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, melted train tracks and started wildfires across the UK. I collect a satellite image from the middle of Hackney Downs. The orbit is very far to the West of London, only 34 degrees in maximum altitude. As the image loads, the prominent swirling cyclone over the Atlantic feels incongruous to the blue sky above. It is an image of extreme drama and turbulence. Here, we are in an envelope of calm.

2025-01-25 10:53:10

Ferranti Park, London

Clear sunny day at Ferrenti Park next to my flat. I am struggling with getting a clear signal with my di-pole antenna. There is a glimpse of an image between all the noise. The signal was very sratchy and noisy but clear for a bit when I kept the antenna near my stomach

2025-01-25 09:25:34

Complexo da Maré, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Na imagem, vemos a vinda de nuvens que aparentam ter uma grande densidade em direção à América do Sul, maior parte indo ao sul e sudeste do Brasil.

2025-01-24 12:37:55

Richard A Carter

York, United Kingdom

This weather sounding took place during Storm Éowyn. Even when undertaken within the ostensibly sheltered confines of York University campus, the roaring winds were more than sufficient to knock over and scatter the ground station equipment, even as the sounding was taken place! The double cross antenna fell to pieces and had to be repaired and held in position against the wind as NOAA-18 passed overhead - surprisingly, this did not appear to impact the recording. Undoubtedly, the chief source of local concern around the climate crises is in its potential to generate flooding from the nearby rivers Ouse and Fosse.

2025-01-24 11:09:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-23 11:00:00

Alba Iulia, Romania

This is my first time using a home made V dipole antenna. Although the quality doesn't seem to be that good. This may be because of the weather or because I somehow didn't build the antenna correctly. Keep in mind that I still use a Baofeng Uv5r and a phone to record. The weather wasn't great, with a little shower pouring down on my location, lot of fog and the average temp. was 4 degrees Celsius. Quite impressed by the range of the transmission being able to see a little of the NNE part of Africa and up to the Baltic Sea.

2025-01-23 10:07:23

Augarten, Wien, Austria

I began to think in "un-"s after reading Naomi Klein's proposal for "unselfing" in resistance to a politics of self-preservation and algorithm-fuelled ego. Around the same time, I realised that adding "un-" to German words is a shortcut to expanding my limited vocabulary. This is how I came across the German word for severe weather, "Unwetter". "Unwetter" is the opposite of "Wetter" and literally translates as un-weather. This week, the transatlantic weather of Trump's inauguration and the explosive fire weather of Los Angeles has been so severe, it has felt like both an Unwetter and an un-doing. That is to say, I can see in the people around me how the events of this week have undone certain beliefs about the past or expectations of the future. At the same time, five days into the ceasefire in Gaza, Palestinians are reckoning with a new un-peace or Unfrieden.

2025-01-23 07:57:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-22 22:55:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-22 17:59:07

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

Storm Éowyn is on it's way but they are unclear how it will unfurl. I can see from the pass that something is heading towards us off the Atlantic. Warnings are changing from yellow to red and I feel for those who will again experience flooding or winds that will cut power for hours or days. We are not a robust country. Our red warning is very different from other places on the planet. The merging of seasons has left us confused and stuck. Sort paralysed by the bigger picture. A low cloud sits above my head as it glows an unsightly orange from the light of the city. Jupiter's pinpoint of light shines through the blanket of cloud. This is another night without the stars. 5 degrees Celcius 90% humidity 995 mb

2025-01-22 11:35:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-22 11:24:14

Sasha Engelmann

Queens Building Fire Escape, Geography Department, Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom

A last minute tutee cancellation gave me a fifteen minute gap in my back to back student meetings, and I snuck out the back of the department to the fire escape overlooking Egham. It was bitingly cold, but fresh. Though the pass was relatively high, the signal struggled to emerge from the static, and I decided the fire escape might not be the best location given interference from heavy machinery, air venting and lab equipment directly adjacent. The news has been filled with the Trump inauguration. For those of us, like my family, who have been directly affected by the LA fires, the slew of executive orders since Monday has felt like another set of fires that were foreshadowed by the burning of Los Angeles over the last two weeks. I am still checking the Calfire map many times daily, and stunned that 'containment' of the Palisades fire is still only 63%. A county infrastructure damage map has recently been released. It looks like a pointilist painting of red, black, green and yellow, but the coloured dots are houses, schools, cafes, libraries, offices and other structures in various states of damage. The map is mostly red, which means 100% structural damage. I found a photo of the house I lived in during high school and couldn't stop looking at it. It is marked as 100% damaged, but unlike other homes that are just piles of rubble, our former house is a hollow cinderblock rectangle with the remainder of the two-story facade pointing to the sky. The single window in the facade looks like a wide eye. Everything inside has burned, but because of the existence of the facade and cinderblock walls, it feels like a hollowing-out rather than a burn-to-the-ground. One can see directly into the corner of the garage where we used to have our family desktop computer- this was where I downloaded music on Limewire for the first time and made CDs for myself and family road trips. It is also the corner of the garage where I sat and chose my first semester's courses at Stanford University. The remainder of the house is a poetics of space- of corners, bubbles, staircases and windows where so much of my life unfolded. The second story - where my bedroom was - is completely gone, and the ring of tall bamboo that used to surround the house is absent. This means the hollow house is open to the sky- in the photograph, this is a pale gray sky that suggests ash still swirling in the air.

2025-01-21 11:48:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-19 12:02:27

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

A passage of the novel Bosnian Chronicle (Travnička hronika) by Ivo Andrić accurately depicts London's weather today. Reading before bed last night, I marked the page of weather scenography with a large stone, and found it on my desk in the morning - a note to self from the Bosnian town of Travnik in the late 19th century: "It meant rain and mud and snow; snow that turned to rain while still in the air, rain that became mud as soon as it hit the ground. At dawn, from behind the patch of clouds, a pale and listless sun would paint the east a wan rose; at the end of a gray day it would reappear again in teh west as a sickly yellow glow, just before the grayness passed into the pitch-black of night. During the day, as at nighttime, the damp breathing of the sky and the soil mingled together in a smoke-thin drizzle that seeped through the town and pervaded everything; in the silent, inexorable alembic of the damp, solid things lost their shape and color, animals changed their temper, men thought and acted moodily" "The wind, soughing along the narrow valley twice a day, merely shifted the damp around and, by wafting sleet and a smell of wet woods as it went, brought new waves of humidity; so the pools of dampness only nudged and overlapped one another and the raw, bone-chilling mountain mist merely replaced the stale, moldering kind in the town" - Ivo Andrić, Bosnian Chronicle, pp. 109

2025-01-19 12:01:13

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

It's mid January and grey. There is no bird song today. Just one lonely gull flying above land locked and trapped between the desolate winter ground and the concreate pallor of the thick cloud. During the pass I look for signs of spring from plants and fruits that shrivel to nothing to protect themselves. Today's pass isn't clear. An over sight from me for not unravelling the cables properly. Cracked lines and a broken image seem to echo a deeper global anxiety. Or maybe it's just January blues. 2 degrees Celsius 81% humidity 1019 mb

2025-01-19 12:00:00

Alba Iulia, Romania

2025-01-19 10:54:52

Steve Engelmann

Studio City, California, United States

This pass was captured from the Hollywood Hills facing the San Fernando Valley. My friend Henry helped out. There were some large power cables just overhead which I suspect created a little interference initially. The skies were a bit hazy, which is a big change from just the day before. I do not think this is related to the fires as they are mostly contained at this point and not actively burning.

2025-01-19 10:14:00

Alba Iulia, Romania

2025-01-19 08:13:00

Alba Iulia, Romania

Yes, I know the photos look bad, but my rig was a Baofeng UV-5r with the stock whip antenna, recorded with a phone. The NOAA-15 came today at 6:19 UTC almost over head with 89 degrees of elevation. There was a lot of fog out, humidity 84%. Temp was -3 Celsius.

2025-01-18 10:09:00

Automatic Ground Station 12 London

London, United Kingdom

2025-01-16 17:17:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-01-16 11:11:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-14 11:37:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-13 04:36:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-01-12 16:02:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-01-12 10:44:13

Diepoldpark, Wien, Austria

I stood in a flurry of snowflakes that would not settle. Large, restless and white-grey, they took on the appearance of ashes. From Vienna to LA, with solidarity and love. This is my first satellite image capture of the year.

2025-01-12 07:44:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-11 10:56:21

Steve Engelmann

Santa Monica Pier, United States

This is day 4 since the Palisades Fire began and it has been quite the rollercoaster. Regardless, NOAA 18 decided to fly over with an elevation of 89°. You don't get much better than that. I decided to visit the Santa Monica Pier as it has great exposure to the sky, and is about as close as I can get to the fire zone. One of the top destinations for tourists, there was much activity. A bodyboarder screams as he catches a wave. The rollercoaster operator ask his riders if they want to go for a second spin. A neon sign above a cafe reads, "Salty air, and not a care". On a small island of homes, my house defied all odds - standing strong. My classroom of 25 years went up in smoke. About 6 1/2 minutes into the satellite pass you can see a thin strip of clouds headed out to the ocean. The winds have died down, but the fire continues. At just 11% containment, it is now threatening Brentwood and Encino. 8 months of no rain and some strong winds. It doesn't take much to change your course.

2025-01-11 10:08:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-10 10:21:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-09 18:37:29

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

Another cold frosty night. An 80% Moon illuminates the frost on the grass. Tiny ice crystals shimmer and glimmer in brightness of the reflected moon light. I try and spot the satellite overhead but lots of fainter objects are fighting for recognition in the blinding lunar light. There the pin sharp brilliance of Venus to the west, Jupiter to the south east and Mars rising in the east. On packing away I walk across the grass leaving footprints that remind me of the moon landings or the fossilised prints left millions of years ago by the dinosaurs. As I type this I can hear the news from the next room reporting on the fires in California. What kind of footprints are being left there today and what about the footprints of the generations to come? 0.1 degrees Celsius 90% humidity 1005 mb

2025-01-09 10:33:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-08 20:25:10

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

For the Los Angeles fires: Blame it on the wind: blame it on the ‘devil’s wind’ that gusts over Los Angeles at 60+ mph, ‘fanning the flame’ of five ongoing, devastating wildfires, as yet ‘uncontained’. Blame it on the wind, an unpredictable, invisible, seemingly chaotic, uncontrollable force: the easiest scapegoat. Whose wind is this? Who remembers its names or its cultures? Who is willing to counter the ‘blame’ with the knowledge that a wind like the ‘Santa Ana’ has a cultural history more than 5,000 years old in the lifeways of the Tongva, Tataviam, Serrano, Kizh, and Chumash Peoples, on whose land Los Angeles was settled and built? The Santa Ana winds may be arid and dry, originating from the desert of the Great Basin. These winds may increase static electricity, topple trees, and produce ‘strange luminosities’ in the sky. Yet being affected by a dry, desert wind is not the same thing as codifying it with sensationalist and ‘demonic’ fears. In demonising the wind, whose demonic actions go unnoticed? Which demons are free to roam? As we blame the wind, how can we have a conversation about the extractive legacies of water stealing, draining and rerouting? Or fire suppression tactics that make the world more flammable? Or centuries of encroachment on more and more arid land? How do we talk about the fact that the logic that pumps money into LAPD and enlists hundreds of incarcerated peoples to fight an uncontainable fire for $4 per day is the very same logic that sends arms to Israel as it burns entire cities and perpetuates another prison? How do we resist sensationalist narratives of neighbourhoods where “millionaires are getting a taste of the apocalyptic movies they have produced and acted in” to be able to see the marginalised, differently abled, and elderly existing side by side, whose narratives of ‘escape’, or simply survival, are far less appealing to a media elite? I pray for the sake of my family home (if it still exists) that the wind relents. But this disaster is not about the wind. (images are screenshots from videos by Steve Engelmann, maps by CalFire, words by me)

2025-01-08 07:48:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-07 20:36:34

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham,

A clear cold night. The winter constellations hang overhead in all their beautiful glory. Orion, Pleiades, Auriga and Taurus drawing out the maps of ancient skies. The lawn is crispy underfoot. The UK is clear on the map except for some small parallel clouds across the counties of Cheshire and the cities of Liverpool and Chester. 1 degree Celsius 90% humidity 1001 mb

2025-01-07 11:25:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-07 09:39:57

Steve Engelmann

Pacific Palisades, California, United States

Today is a blustery day in Los Angeles. The National Weather Service predicts a "life-threatening and destructive" windstorm, with gusts of wind up to 160 kph. Over the last 8 months, southern California hasn't received a rainfall event with more than a few millimeters of precipitation. The landscape is dry and the humidity is expected to drop (currently 20%). A spark from a power line can ignite the extremely flammable brush and then carry embers great distances. "Fire season" used to refer to late August, September and October. In recent years, some of the worst fires in California history happened in November, December and January. With a changing climate there is a need to update our terminology. While some people might think this is an excuse to hunker down and ride out the storm, I thought this is a reason to break out the antenna. I went up into the hills of the Santa Monica Mountains and captured a pass. While writing this weather note, I started hearing sirens. A neighbor sent me a text. I hopped on my roof and watched flames come over a ridge (see image 3). Ended up evacuating due to air quality.

2025-01-06 20:50:07

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

It's cold. It's been cold all day. I am stood watching Mars and Jupiter fade in out of the clouds along with a quarter Moon. There are layers of cloud tonight. Lower ones are moving fast and in small wispy shapes. The higher clouds glow an orange colour from the light pollution and as I pad around on the lawn during the pass I hear the splashing of water against my boots and I notice that the lawn is water logged in places. There was so much rain last night and another down pouring of sleet and snow today. Airports were shut, roads and rail lines flooded. More to come. 3.1 degrees Celsius 99% humidity 990mb

2025-01-06 11:39:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-05 11:52:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Another cool, crisp day. Turkey vultures soar on invisible updrafts in the sky. The dry grass is filled with tiny capped nuts, acorn-like but smaller. Surprisingly, dogs search them out and crunch their shells- an unlikely snack. Spanish moss hangs serenely from oak branches, sometimes reaching the ground.

2025-01-04 10:47:21

Steve Engelmann

Bel Air, California, United States

Today I thought I would visit LA's Getty Center. They are coordinating a project called PST:ART which includes over 70 exhibitions throughout southern California with a focus on how art and science collide. The Getty Center also has an amazing outdoor area with spectacular views of Los Angeles. What a great place to also grab a satellite pass - I thought. When security took a look at the disassembled antenna I was bringing along, they had second thoughts. I wasn't able to convince security, or her supervisor, that my intentions were harmless. But I've learned to be flexible. On the spot I hatched a plan B. With 20 minutes to go, I used my speed-walking skills to relocate on an overpass where Sunset Blvd crosses the 405 freeway. On the first image you can see the Getty Center in the background perched on a hillside. The view was a step down from the Getty, but also, not bad. I'm sure there were many suspicious looks from the busy street with a strange man pointing an antenna at the sky. Then again, this is a stone's throw away from Hollywood. At a little over 8 minutes in, a commuter bus blocked by reception for two seconds. A line of static documents the interference. Life throws us many curveballs. The next four years should be no different.

2025-01-04 09:56:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

The ‘Cheshire Cat’ moon hung ponderously over the old golf course at West End in Newberry. The sky was a spectrum starting at the palest yellow to blue and violet. In the tract housing that surrounds a good part of the field, I noticed paper taped to windows with the writing facing out, like a label of completeness, while in other windows Christmas tree lights shone out. On this last of many walks in this park, I felt an eerie sense of quiet.

2025-01-03 16:14:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-01-03 10:58:05

Steve Engelmann

Pacific Palisades, California, United States

It is hard to pass up an opportunity when a satellite is passing by with an elevation of 87°. Back in Los Angeles I thought I would try out roof-top parking for an unobstructed view. The skies were mostly cloudy with a cool marine layer bringing in a little fog. There was also a light scattering of stratocumulus and high cirrus clouds, but no precipitation. The Air Quality Management District initiated an Air Quality Alert. An inversion layer, which is common in LA, traps air pollutants low to the ground. For this reason there is a ban on wood burning. The fine particulates get deep into lungs and can trigger a range of health issues. Could use some rain, but nothing in the forecast for the next 10 days.

2025-01-03 10:07:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Hurricane Idalia has haunted several conversations with locals on the west coast of Florida. In Crystal River, a sleepy seaside town known for its warm springs and manatees, the severity of Idalia was attributed to “a trifecta: king tide, full moon, west wind”. This phrase stayed with me as the New Year passed and the holidays drew to a close. Before spending time in Florida, I had little knowledge of the diversity of hurricanes and which local conditions affected their impact. Hurricane Helene apparently was a “muddy one” as it dragged up tons of mud into houses, streets and dry surfaces, and so repair was even more laborious. I heard the same person from Crystal River say that “because hurricanes tend to hit at night, you never know what’s around you”. They were pointing to Christmas Island, a small patch of land in the middle of the mouth of the river that had been the site of a single house before Idalia- after the storm hit, locals could only make out the Christmas lights strung up around the darkened house, hence its name. It was bought and rebuilt in 2024, right before Helene hit, and now stands crumbling and empty. We also passed a line up of sail boats in the rivermouth, two of which had sunk during Helene, their sailing masts pointing out of the water crookedly. “They didn’t tie up properly for the hurricane” we learned. Yet dozens of other boats were peacefully anchored adjacent and around the sunken ones. Their owners had stayed on their boats during the storm.

2025-01-02 21:39:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

2025-01-02 18:37:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2025-01-02 10:20:00

Filip Shatlan and Diana Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Migrating sandhill cranes, common apple snails and wild Spanish horses emerged from the tall grass and reeds of Paynes Prairie on a hike yesterday afternoon. The air was much cooler and crisper than previous days, and the humidity dropped from 90% to 50%. We came across an impression in the mud, the outline and texture of which looked strikingly like the sideways body of a pig. There were even tiny lines that looked like fur, and hoof prints where it got up after rolling around. The Paynes Prairie visitor centre had boasted a large poster of a wild boar with very black fur and gleaming eyes, and the title on top of the image said, in bold letters, 'Alien invaders'. Another section of the educational exhibit had information on the history of the prairie, and featured a wall sized display about Seminole and Potano Indigenous communities. Amidst information on Seminole pottery, hunting tools and agriculture, one sentence acknowledged that: "Seminole populations declined in the 18th and 19th centuries due to war, disease and land dispossession". But which wars? Which diseases? Land dispossession by who? These questions and answers were absent.

2025-01-02 10:19:52

Steve Engelmann

Newberry, Florida, United States

Went out to capture a satellite pass with a super high elevation (87°). Found an abandoned golf course in the process of being repurposed with a relatively clear skyline. The skies were mostly clear with some cirrus clouds toning down the sunlight. It was a crisp 10°C at 10AM, which seems a bit unexpected for someone not from Florida. Just at the satellite was at it's highest point, an airplane left a contrail, as if to mark the spot.

2025-01-02 10:06:55

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

A bright and crisp morning. Blue skies and frost underfoot. There is a stillness to the day and though it's already the 2nd January the new year feels like it's still slowly unfurling. Blue Tits and Robins interject with pips and chirps that are bumped off the musical score by the prehistoric caws and croaks of the corvids. The British Isles are clear. A rare sight indeed. 2 degrees celsius 82% humidity air pressure 1011 hPa/mb

2025-01-01 10:33:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Today marks the official permanent installation of the Gainesville Automatic Satellite Ground Station on the roof! We did one more test of two AGS's (15 and 12) running in parallel and receiving the same satellite shortly after 10:30am from the roof. Both received stunningly clear images, even though the pass was only around 65 degrees at max elevation. One V-dipole was mounted on the permanent installation site, and Steve held the second. The former received an image with less interference, which made sense, given it had nothing around it to possibly affect the antenna's radiation pattern. After drilling a pilot hole through the PVC that holds the antenna to the (now waterproof) wooden mast, we used a wood screw to solidly connect the two. We stretched out the RG8X coaxial cable throughout the backyard to make sure there were no kinks, and screwed one end into the base of the antenna on the roof, using zip ties to hold the cable against the mast. Following one edge of the roof, we bolted the cable down with small cable brackets, and looped it under the garage door overhang, following the edge of the moulding around the door to the floor, where we hooked it under a piece of wood. Steve drilled away some of the wood on the inside part of the garage door corner, where we passed the cable through to the inside, testing the garage door could open and close without causing any friction. We then bracketed the cable to the moulding along the bottom of the garage wall to the corner where there is a work desk and a power plug. We had a good metre and a half of cable left, and gently looped this around twice. After the cable was stretched out and secured, we returned to the roof, where we oriented the V-dipole to 'true north' using a professional compass, which meant we had to apply a 6 degree West declination (based on the difference between magnetic North and true North from our position in Florida). One of us oriented the antenna with the compass while the other screwed the wooden mast tightly into the steel mount with two screws. We also wrapped the UHF connector at the end of the coaxial cable with some vinyl electrical tape to protect it from UV radiation and water damage. Back inside, we cleaned up the wood shavings, glue, and spare screws. As we didn't have any extra 3D print casings for the Florida AGS, we DIY-ed a small cardboard box, and hooked up AGS 15 in its corner. It lit up, and let us know that it was going to collect a NOAA-15 pass shortly before 7pm this evening!

2025-01-01 05:54:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-31 14:02:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-31 11:14:24

Steve Engelmann

Newberry, Florida, United States

Got up on a roof in central Florida with my nephew to do a little training and compare two different antennas on a satellite pass. The sun came in and out of the clouds often. Combining the warm December temperatures, humidity and the dark roof surface I came down a little sweaty. On the last day of 2024 it is always interesting to assess the year that just passed and contemplate what lies ahead. 2023 was the warmest year on record regarding global temperatures. The consensus is that 2024 will end up being warmer still. At this moment there is a polar vortex sending frigid temperatures to the midwest and northeast. Ironically, climate change makes these events more likely. Searching for opportunities to dial down carbon emissions would be a great new year's resolution.

2024-12-31 11:00:29

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

A low winter sun brushed over the bare trees and though it tried to break through it was beaten by the cloud. While the pass happened I moved the outside furniture and bins around in preparation for the windy weather that was forecast for the afternoon. 10 degrees Celsius

2024-12-31 09:15:30

GREECE, Northern Greece

Northern Greece

NOAA 19 from Greece at 09:15AM local time ( 07:15 utc time)

2024-12-30 11:28:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

We were late in plugging-in the semi-permanently mounted V-dipole antenna to the 'recording' AGS, but happy to see it standing on the peak of the garage roof, glinting orange-pink in the sunlight, without anyone attempting to hold it in place, as it received an image from NOAA-18. After several antenna radiation pattern calculations, we decided to try a test antenna height of 0.8 metres off the pinnacle of the roof. While some radio forums suggest putting the antenna as high as possible, others suggest this is not necessary, especially if one is already mounting on a semi-conductive wooden roof (as opposed to concrete or steel). Depending on what surface the v-dipole antenna takes as 'ground', the antenna height can create different patterns of reception, and can even lead to 'null' points where no signal data can be received. However, as Gainesville can get very strong, hurricane force winds, and we couldn't see many examples of tall antennas or rooftop weathervanes in the neighbourhood, we opted to keep the antenna height under one metre, and 0.8 seemed to work great today, despite our lateness. To secure the antenna mast to the roof, we used a steel 'weathervane' mount with special wood screws with deep ribbons that we had gotten at the local ACE hardware store, and a good coating of a transparent sealant gel called, somewhat counter-intuitively, 'Through the Roof!' We managed to hit a stud with one side of the steel mount, which was a good sign for the sturdiness of the antenna, but also meant that the drill pushed further into the roof on the stud side of the mount, and slightly unbalanced the mount. We unscrewed, knocked some wooden 'shims' under the metal pad at the stud side, and checked its straightness by hanging a roll of tape on a golden ribbon next to the mast. Tomorrow, hopefully, we will be able to tie the RF cable onto the mast, and bracket / secure the cable to the roof, wrapping it around the edge of the garage door and entering the garage where the AGS will stay plugged in.

2024-12-29 20:52:41

Pauline Woolley

The Urban Garden, Nottingham, UK

A night time pass. It's 8 degrees Celsius. Cloud whispers across the sky. Jupiter is a small smoky dot that battles for attention. There is a slight breeze and it feels much colder than the temperature states. 90% humidity 1018 air pressure

2024-12-29 17:45:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-29 11:41:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

A huge amount of progress was made today with AGS reception! It is hard to contain the excitement while writing this weather note. After several months exploring ‘herringbone’ distortion patterns and deep diving into NOAA APT + Raspberry Pi tutorials, the team found an ‘instructable’ tutorial via which several people seemed to be receiving relatively long and clear NOAA images. In this tutorial, Grayson noticed a filter option for rtl_fm called -F 9 that we hadn’t tried to implement in the AGS code yet, and he added it in an update yesterday. Last night, the roof mounted turnstile in Florida had to be taken down due to a lightning storm and ‘extreme’ tornado warning. Yet even though it was up against a garage wall and under an overhang, the last evening pass of the day yesterday showed telemetry data at the top and bottom of the image, where previous captures only recorded static. This morning, despite an ongoing storm and tornado warning, the Turnstile was positioned out on the front lawn for a 70 degree max elevation pass shortly after 11:40. In stark contrast to previous ‘letterbox’ type images in which satellite data only appeared in the central strip of the recording, today the image is significantly longer and clearer, with telemetry data clearly showing through static at the beginning and end of the pass. Also, the typical ‘herringbone’ type distortion seen in all previous images appears to be gone! More testing will verify this but at present this is something to celebrate.

2024-12-28 11:53:14

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

To continue our antenna comparison, we sat on the roof shortly before noon with a weatherised V-Dipole and the tripod- mounted Turnstile, looking north. The V-dipole was hooked up to AGS 15, while the Turnstile received via an android phone running SDR++. The image attached to this post is from the latter. After the pass, Steve did a soil texturing test which revealed the local soil to be ‘loamy sand’.

2024-12-28 04:35:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-27 14:06:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-27 09:56:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

We joked that Orlando kept getting farther away as we drove south on 75, east through Ocala National Forest, over the waters of Lake Monroe, and alongside cattle pastures and skeleton scarecrows. Rain splattered intermittently on the windshield. Billboards declared that ‘at 18 days since conception, a baby’s heart is already beating’, or ‘man up: your child needs you.’ An entire single story house rolled down the highway taking up two lanes, flanked by pickup trucks. A corner ‘yard art’ shop burst with bronze eagles, brown bears, American flags and an original Bob’s Big Boy sculpture, complete with a checkered red and white outfit and a sculptural hamburger on a plate.

2024-12-26 16:13:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-26 10:09:05

Gainesville, FL, United States of America

United States of America

This was my first time picking up a satellite signal! Very intriguing process. It was chilly (compared to typical Florida weather) and very cloudy, but not windy. There's a bit of South America in the lower part of the image, such as the Panama Canal, as well as most of the East Coast. We can see some tougher, perhaps stormy clouds moving in from the bottom.

2024-12-26 10:08:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

Florida balances over one big aquifer: a hidden cavernous water system fed by rainfall that stretches beneath the everglades, wetlands and an ecological system known as 'moist sandy pine / hardwood woodlands'. Walking through the Sweetwater Wetlands south of Gainesville yesterday, we met some of the water on its way into the depths. Today, at Rainbow Springs, an hour further south, we saw some of it come out, bubbling up through pale white-gray sand, so abundantly that it creates the Rainbow River, a wide, flat river sustaining alligators, turtles, catfish, frogs, coral snakes and other wildlife. Rainbow Springs exists because of the thinner karst rock separating the aquifer from the surface, while elsewhere in the state, the rock-shield is much thicker. The upwelling makes the water below feel very close, even reachable, but we learned that the water in the Floridan Aquifer is between 17,000 and 26,000 years old. The springs seemed otherworldly in their crystal clear shallows, ferns and mossy trees, and two impressive waterfalls cascaded over towering rocks. One of the waterfalls was named 'Seminole Falls', after local Indigenous peoples who never ceded their land. We speculated that the two tall waterfalls might have been built up as the upwelling spring water deposited minerals over thousands of years. Later a park ranger informed us that the waterfalls were entirely man-made in the 1930s, created with sediment dredged from the bottom of the springs, and that water has been power-pumped to the top of the rocks for decades, just so visitors can watch it fall.

2024-12-25 16:26:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

2024-12-25 10:22:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

"What is this obsession with 'manned' or 'unmanned'?!" jokes Bowen Yang, playing 'A Drone' on Saturday Night Live. "For the record" Bowen continues "I can get a man whenever I want!". The skit plays on political divisions haunting thousands if not millions of American Christmas Eve dinners this year. I had not heard about the reported drone sightings prior to arriving in Florida, but they have been raised by local family members at every opportunity. "What is the government really doing?" "Remember the media explosion about that one Chinese balloon?! Now there are hundreds of drones and no one is talking about it!" Or, "I just worry about what could happen in New York on New Years Eve". Earlier in the week, when Steve and I set up the turnstile antenna on the roof of my Mom's house, a family member walked over and asked if we could listen to the drones. I decided to preserve a bit of mystery: "this is for satellites, but both satellites and drones communicate via radio waves".

2024-12-24 10:34:00

Automatic Ground Station 12 Florida

Gainesville, Florida , United States

We ran two AGS at the same time to test the difference between a weatherised V-dipole and a static mounted Turnstile on the top of the roof. The pass was around 68 degrees in maximum elevation- so not ideal, but good enough for a comparison. Steve reclined on the roof and used a spare curtain rod to hold the V-dipole in a static position for eleven minutes. We ran a spare radio cable from the V-dipole through the garage door to AGS 12, while AGS 3 stayed connected to the turnstile. Comparing the images is interesting: AGS 12 / V-dipole picked up the satellite signal a little earlier, but more bands of interference run through the start of the image. In contrast, AGS 3 / Turnstile pick up the signal later, but the middle part of the image is generally clearer. The antennas lose the signal at about the same time to the South.

2024-12-24 10:34:00

Sasha Engelmann Steve Engelmann

Gainesville, Florida , United States

After a few hours at Florida's coast, one begins to see beyond the obvious signs of damage from Hurricane Helene to houses and infrastructure, and other more subtle signals become visible. At the edge of the marshes in Suwannee, a town at the mouth of the Suwanneee river, the land had subsided significantly. We spotted a red life jacket caught in top of a stand of high reeds near the waterline. Near the Cedar Keys museum, a bleached log had been lifted into the upper branches of a Cedar or Juniper. "Have a good time on the island- or what's left of it" said a Cedar Keys resident named Tom as we left the community garden he had set up and repaired from storm damage. We noticed how local mud clams grow in clumps, clustering on each other, rather than on rocks, like the clams and mussels of California and the UK. In the mud, the footsteps of boots traced a path to a dense outcrop of clams, presumably for a local clam harvest. Raccoon feet looked like tiny hands sunk deep in the mud. "When I was young we all used to go clam stomping" said a woman we spoke to in Cedar Keys. "You would stand in the mud and stomp your feet down over the clam. They were huge" she made a sign with her hands, fingers arranged in a large diamond shape, "nothing like what we eat today", she added.

2024-12-24 05:55:00

Cosmos Astronomy Club

prev 1 2 3 4 … 10 next