🛰 Satellite New Tab Page (Chrome and Firefox)

Experience the latest image taken by the geostationary Himawari satellites every time you open a new tab in Chrome or Firefox. The Himawari satellites have been deployed by the Japan Meteorological Agency and takes photographs of Earth every 10 minutes. Since the new tab page is a simple web page, you can also try it online.

The browser extension supports multiple satellites: Himawari, GOES, Meteosat, and DSCOVR.

Installation

Chrome Users:

Firefox Users:

Below are screenshots of the different satellite images supported by this extension (Himawari, GOES, Meteosat, and DSCOVR).

This extension is inspired by https://glittering.blue/, https://github.com/jakiestfu/himawari.js/ and https://github.com/ungoldman/himawari-urls.

Features of the extension

• Switch between visible light and infrared images from Himawari 8, Himawari 9, images from the EPIC camera on the DSCOVR satellite, GOES 16, GOES 17, GOES 19, and Meteosat (can only switch in the extension).
• Loads the latest image, updates automatically.
• Automatically loads images at the optimal resolution (including retina resolutions). If more than one image is needed, the app automatically downloads tiles.
• Uses Google's caching to take the load from the image servers.
• Caches last version in local storage (compressed JPEG) and immediately displays it when you load the page. Then loads the latest image.
• JSON proxy on AppEngine to get around same origin policy. The code is on the proxy branch.
• To get the latest image URL for Meteosat, we use a web scraper.
• Full offline support.
• Images are drawn on a canvas so that we can cache and load it easily.
• The Earth always stay centered, thanks to CSS magic.
• Earth is animated when it moves in (optional).

Here is a screenshot of the options dialog in Chrome:

Changelog

0.22.0 Update to new proxy, add GOES 19 and Himawari 9.
0.21.0 Update RAMMB URL format. Move to manifest v3 for Chrome.
0.20.0 Support natural variant for GOES 17 west.
0.19.1, 0.19.2 Fix Himawari base URL.
0.19.0 Disable unreliable image cache in extension.
0.18.1 Fix GOES URLs. Thanks to @mattijn.
0.18.0 Remove d3-request and d3-queue and instead use fetch and async
0.17.0 Add GOES 17
0.16.1 Store large images with reduced quality until they fit
0.16.0 Add Meteosat images thanks to @erget
0.15.0 Add GOES 16 natural image thanks to @TheNeuralBit
0.14.0 Remove GOES 13 and 15 as NASA does not support them anymore
0.13.1 Faster time ago update
0.12.0 Improve animation initialization
0.11.1 Faster animation
0.11.0 Add GOES 16 and animation
0.10.0 Firefox support
0.9.0 Fix web extension compatibility. Immediately load new image when settings change.
0.8.0 Compatible with web extensions for Firefox
0.6.1, 0.7.0: Fix GOES caching
0.6.0: Add GOES 13 and GOES 15 images (see options). Fix issues with DSCOVR.
0.5.0: Fix issues with DSCOVR. Add enhanced images for DSCOVR.
0.4.3: Fix issue with latest date for himawari color image
0.4.2: Fix DSCOVR EPIC base url
0.4.0: Add DSCOVR images and link to explore online
0.3.2: Improve styling
0.3.1: Fix issue with options.html and options.js missing
0.3.0: Add option to choose infrared image
0.2.5: New proxy server
0.2.2: Better layout
0.2.1: Faster loading, offline support

Planned features

Contributions welcome

• Automatically download a better image if the window is resized
• Time travel
• Actual logo/ icon
• Error handling

Demo

Have a look at the latest image from Himawari 8.

Develop

Install the latest dependencies with yarn. Then run yarn watch in one terminal to compile the bundle in the background. At this point you can choose between two methods to view the page. First, you can run yarn start to start the webserver at localhost:8000. Note that if you are using this method, you cannot access some browser extension specific features. Second, install the extension as an unpacked extension into Chrome or Firefox and open a new tab. The extension should load in development mode.

To make a release, update the version number in package.json and manifest.*.json. Then commit the changes and tag it. Lastly, pack the extension (yarn bundle), push the code and tags, and deploy on the chrome app store.