Meteosat Second Generation (MSG)

Operator: EUMETSAT

Type of orbit: Geostationary

Instrument: SEVIRI (spinning enhanced visible and infrared imager)

Number of spectral bands: 12

Resolution at the subsatellite point: VIS/NIR: 1~3km, IR: 3km

Pictures are taken at 15 minutes intervals.

Images of Europe are taken every 5 minutes.

The radiometer scans the earth's surface line by line; each line consists of a series of individual image elements or pixels. For each pixel the radiometer measures the radiative energy of the different spectral bands. This measurement is digitally coded and transmitted to the ground station for pre-processing before being disseminated to the user community.