• Eastern Caribbean (Infrared)
• Eastern Caribbean (Visible)
• Eastern Caribbean (Infrared loop in color)
• Eastern Caribbean (Visible loop)
• Northern Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea (Infrared in black & white)
• North America & Caribbean Area (Infrared)
• Full Disk picture of Americas, Atlantic Ocean and Eastern Pacific (Infrared)
• Tropical Eastern Pacific (Infrared)
• Tropical Atlantic (Infrared)
• Tropical Atlantic (Visible)
• Western Europe (Infrared)
• Eastern Asia, Western Pacific Ocean and Australia (Infrared)
• Eastern and Central Pacific Ocean and Western North, Central and South America (Infrared)
• Composition of pictures spanning the whole Earth (Infrared)

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Weather satellites make pictures in several channels. Those channels are numbered from one to five. Channel one is the so-called visible channel. Visible pictures can only be viewed during daytime since only when the sunlight is reflected by the Earth (and the clouds above it), objects will be visible on them. Infrared pictures (channels 2 through 5) can be viewed both during day and night. Each one of these channels has certain advantages for the meteorologist. Channel two for instance shows lower clouds in the tropics better at night than the other infrared channels. Channel three is also known as the water vapor channel.
Clouds appear on visible pictures as white or grey spots. The whiter the clouds appear, the denser and more likely rain producers they are. Lower and smaller clouds are also easier to see on visible pictures.
On infrared pictures, the whiter clouds are the colder (and higher) ones. Sometimes higher clouds (which consist of billions of very small ice crystals) are very thin and hardly appear on visible pictures. On infrared pictures however, they may appear as very dense white clouds. The untrained observer might mistakenly see these clouds as rain producers which they many times are not in our area. Thunderstorm clouds on the other hand appear dense on both infrared as visible pictures.
Nowadays the colder clouds (on infrared pictures) can then be shown in several types of colors depending on their temperatures. Many times the highest (= coldest) tops will appear in colors like yellow, orange and red. 
Most of the pictures you can download here are rarely older than 30 minutes. For non-meteorologists, the infrared and visible pictures are easier to interpret. The satellite pictures on this site are offered by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and are also refreshed every 30 minutes. 

In case you have trouble identifying weather systems or cloud formations on the satellite pictures you can see through my links, you are hereby advised to read the Tropical Weather Discussion. This message is written by meteorologists at the Tropical Prediction Center (formerly known as the National Hurricane Center) and updated every six hours.
At the Meteorological Service in Curaçao and also at its branches in Sint Maarten and Aruba, good quality satellite pictures can be received directly from the GOES-12 satellite. These pictures can be zoomed in so that quite a few details can be seen on them. The picture below to the right was made on September 19, 1998 at 12:45 PM local time (16:45 UTC*). It shows a close-up shot of hurricane Georges when it was at its strongest point. One and a half day later, it would weaken somewhat but it still started its destructive spree through the northern Caribbean.
To see more examples, see the Satellite section on the MIO Weather Page which can be reached through the MIO Home Page or better, by clicking here. 
* UTC stands for Universal Time Coordinated, which is the same as GMT (Greenwich Mean  Time) or four hours ahead of our Atlantic Standard Time.