Use the Product Listbox to view the GOES and POES images on this page. This pair of visible images taken at similar times highlights key differences between the current suite of GOES and POES. The GOES-10 image shows the coverage of a typical scan taken every 15 minutes. The POES image shows a sector taken by a NOAA polar satellite. The POES images are available approximately every 6 hours using 2 satellites.

Note that in the GOES image, spatial resolution degrades with increasing distance away from the satellite's subpoint. Once beyond 70 degrees latitude, few features are observable due to the GOES's large viewing angle. The NOAA polar satellite offers high-resolution imagery at all latitudes across a swath 3000 km in width. This assures that visible and infrared coverage at the equator will be contiguous while coverage at higher latitudes is overlapping.