Download real-time images of Earth from the Himawari-8 satellite

Himawari 8 is a geostationary weather satellite deployed by the Japan Meteorological Agency. It takes photographs of Earth every 10 minutes.

• Getting Started
• Usage
• Command Line Interface
• Acknowledgements
• Example Images
• Example Scripts
• Licensing

Getting Started

brew install imagemagick
brew install graphicsmagick
npm i himawari

If you would like to generate videos, ffmpeg is also required.

brew install ffmpeg

Usage

var himawari = require('himawari');

himawari({

  /**
   * The zoom level of the image. Can be 1-5 for non-infrared, and 1-3 for infrared (default: 1)
   * Each zoom level requires more images to be downloaded and therefore stitched
   * together. Higher zoom yields a higher resolution image.
   * @type {Number}
   */
  zoom: 1,

  /**
   * The time of the picture desired. If you want to get the latest image, use 'latest'
   * @type {String|Date}
   */
  date: 'latest', // Or new Date() or a date string

  /**
   * Turns on logging
   * @type {Boolean}
   */
  debug: false,

  /**
   * If set to true, an image on the infrared light spectrum will be generated. Please note that
   * infrared only supports zooms up to 3
   * @type {Boolean}
   */
  infrared: false,

  /**
   * The location to save the resulting image
   * @type {String}
   */
  outfile: '/path/to/output/earth.jpg',

  /**
   * Set to true to parallelize tile downloads. Can be CPU intensive but decreases time to download images.
   * @type {Boolean}
   */
  parallel: false,

  /**
   * Skip empty images from being saved
   * @type {Boolean}
   */
  skipEmpty: true,

  /**
   * The max duration in milliseconds before requests for images and data times out
   * @type {Number}
   */
  timeout: 30000,

  /**
   * If true, only prints the URLs of the images that would have been downloaded
   * @type {Boolean}
   */
  urls: false,

  /**
   * A success callback if the image downloads successfully
   * @type {Function}
   */
  success: function () { process.exit(); },

  /**
   * A callback if the image cannot be downloaded or saved
   * @type {Function}
   * @param  {Object} err An error object or information surrounding the issue
   */
  error: function (err) { console.log(err); },

  /**
   * A callback that is fired every time a tile has been downloaded.
   * @param  {Object} info Information about the download such as filepath, part, and total images
   */
  chunk: function (info) {
    console.log(info.outfile + ': ' + info.part + '/' + info.total);
  }
});

Command Line Interface

There is also a command-line interface available if you install it with -g.

npm i -g himawari

This installs a program called himawari that can be used like so:

Usage: himawari [options]
    --zoom, -z            The zoom level of the image. Can be 1-5. (Default: `1`)
    --date, -d            The time of the picture desired. If you want to get the latest image, use 'latest'. (Default: `"latest"`)
    --debug, -l           Turns on logging. (Default: `false`)
    --outfile, -o         The location to save the resulting image. (Default: `"himawari-{date}.jpg"` in current directory)
    --parallel, -p        Parallelize downloads for increased speeds (can be CPU intensive)
    --skipempty, -s       Skip saving images that contain no useful information (i.e. "No Image") (Default: `true`)
    --timeout, -t         The max duration in milliseconds before requests for images and data times out (Default: `30000`)
    --urls, -u            Only print the URLs of the images that would have been downloaded (Default: `false`)
    --infrared, -i        Capture picture on the infrared spectrum (Default: `false`)
    --version, -v         Prints the version of the package
    --help, -h            Show help

Acknowledgements

• Japan Meteorological Agency
• NICT
• Michael Pote created a Powershell Script that inspired this library.

Example Images

Example Scripts

There are two example files that showcase how Himawari.js can be used. The first, basic.js, is to simply be executed and will download the latest image of earth and save it to your Desktop.

The second, video.js, will get a particular date (one where it starts off all black), and will decrement 10 minutes from that date until it has been 24 hours. The resulting images will be saved to a directory, and then piped to ffmpeg which will stitch the images together in a lovely video for you to oogle over.

Licensing

MIT