Replies

I may be wrong, but US NOAA weather satellites are in geosync orbit and don't really eclipse for long periods. The sats take two mains types of images -- infrared and visual. The IR gives temperature. High clouds mean more development; these show up as cooler clouds, being higher. IR images can be taken 24 hours a day if I recall correctly. The visual satellite provides better structural information but is always "lost" some time after dusk (fades out after sunset, fades in before sunrise) because the ground is no longer sufficiently bright. That's why the 315Z time is the time of the last image -- that's 10:15 CDT or about when even the western part of the sat footprint becomes too dark to be useful.

NOAA GOES sats eclipse during this time of year. They are blocked from the sun's light and since they run on Solar power...don't have the energy to run the instruments to they are shut off. It lasts for 48 days each cycle and is greatest (3 hours or so) near the equinox. We are at this point so expect an outage of about 3 hours tonight.