After successfully receiving images from NOAA weather satellites, I decided to try my hand at pulling down images from the GOES weather satellites in geosynchronous orbits over the Equator. So I bought a GOES satellite receiver kit and set it up in the Norwich parking lot:

Unfortunately, while I was able to receive text weather reports and small GIF images of hand-drawn weather maps, there was too much radio interference to receive actual satellite images. I suspect either Mitchell Airport or local LTE cell traffic. The GOES satellites transmit at 1694.1 MHz, which is quite close to some LTE frequencies. I was getting a splash of static across the entire band every few seconds. Small files (under 100KB or so) could often get through between static splashes, but larger files, such as the images of the entire hemisphere, could not.

I solved this problem by the simple expedient of relocating the antenna to a hilltop at 8000 feet elevation in the Colorado Rockies:

At this location, I have been able to receive images from both the GOES-16 satellite located over Colombia, which views the entire Western Hemisphere, and the GOES-18 satellite located over the mid-Pacific Ocean, which views Hawaii, Alaska, and the Western US and Canada. Some examples are below (downsized from the originals, which are quite large!)

Here's a loop of images from GOES-18 postprocessed to add color:

Note the reflection of the Sun on the ocean!

Here's a storm track for 9/1/23 from GOES-16:

GOES-18 also relays images from the Himawari 8 satellite located between Japan and Australia:

To receive these images, I've been using the goestools open source software. It was a bit of a challenge to compile this under Ubuntu 22.04, as the last update to the software was about 4 years ago, but by downgrading a few libraries, I got it to work. I also had to update its configuration files, as it referred to GOES-15, 16, and 17, and the currently active satellites are GOES-16 and 18.

I've also had success receiving images with Satdump, but goestools provides more capabilities for post-processing. Satdump, however, does a more complete job of receiving all the text weather reports and alerts.