Meteosat Images Help
Please choose one of the following topics:
Please
note that the services described on this page are presented on a best-effort
basis and EUMETSAT reserves the right to cease or change the services without
any notice!
How to View
the Latest Imagery
The links in the table below
are to special filenames of many type of imagery that will always show
the latest available Meteosat imagery from EUMETSAT.
To bookmark an imagery type,
simply right click on the one you would like to see and from the menu that
appears choose 'Add bookmark' (for Netscape users) or 'Add to Favourites'
(for Microsoft Internet Explorer users).
To place an image within
a page on your web site simply right-click and choose 'Copy Link Location'
(for Netscape users) or 'Copy Shortcut' (for Internet Explorer users) and
then paste this link into your page (don't copy and paste the image itself,
that won't work!), making sure to inform users to reload or to place a
flag in the HTML page that always reloads the image when a user loads the
page. Please also make sure that you follow the copyright statement on
the main EUMETSAT Meteosat Images page.
We would also be very grateful that if you wish to use this service that
you contact us to let us know so that
in future we can contact you with changes or upgrades to this service.
How to
Download the Latest Imagery
The following are some guidelines
for writing programs that automatically download imagery from the EUMETSAT
web site:
1. Don't connect more often
than necessary
The satellites only scan the
earth every 30 minutes so there's no point in looking on our server more
often than that. Ideally a program should be written so that it only connects
once per run, and is run automatically every 30 minutes (i.e. using the
UNIX 'crontab' or Windows NT 'at' commands).
| GOOD |
OK |
BAD |
AWFUL |
BEGIN
connect
download
END |
WHILE (true)
connect
download
sleep for 30 or 180* minutes
END WHILE |
WHILE (true)
connect
download
sleep for 5 minutes
END WHILE |
WHILE (true)
connect
download
END WHILE |
|
* full disc images are only
made available on our server every three hours.
2. Don't retry too many times
after failing to establish a connection
| GOOD |
BAD |
number_of_retries = 3
i = 0
DO
response = connect
IF (response = "connected")
download
ELSE
i = i + 1
sleep 30 seconds
END IF
WHILE (response <> "connected"
AND i < number_of_retries) |
DO
response = connect
WHILE (response = "not connected")
download |
|
Users
should be aware that EUMETSAT reserves the right to refuse or restrict
access to Meteosat imagery to those users who regularly choose to ignore
the above guidelines.
How to Bookmark
Imagery Pages
If you wish to bookmark any
imagery type available via the main 'Meteosat Images' page, please
first select the type of imagery you wish to bookmark and then simply follow
the instructions on the page that contains the imagery that you wish to
bookmark. Please note that if you follow the instructions you won't bookmark
the image itself, but rather the type of imagery that is displayed,
and each time you visit the bookmark you'll be shown the latest available
image of that type! (Ofcourse, depending on how often you visit the bookmark,
you may need to 'Reload' or 'Refresh' the page).
