Satellite siting view:

I built this to decide where a GOES-19 dish could go at home, then rebuilt it for a public site so it can be shared. It combines the terrain and canopy code from dark-sky, the lidar groundwork from TALON, and the dish from my GOES-19 ground station. Drag the red pin or use the 5 m nudge controls. Every selectable point has its own terrain raycast, measured lidar obstruction trace, and 360° horizon profile.

Loading about 9 MB of terrain and lidar data...

Move observer by 5 m

Selected grid point

Dish/view height Feet above lidar-measured ground at the selected point.

Safety corridor width Allows for dish width, aim error, and moving branches around the exact centerline.

Tree growth allowance Added above the leaf-off canopy for growth and crown movement.

Ground elevation

Highest mountain

Measured tree line

Tree + allowance

Measured structure

Height for 2° margin

Azimuth (true)

Elevation

Grid offset

Drag or click near the red pin. It snaps to the nearest precomputed 5 m location.

clear marginal blocked

Google Apple Maps

Horizon view toward the satellite

what one eye at the pin sees; the teal tick is the highest thing inside the safety corridor

bare terrainlidar canopy + allowancelidar structuressatellitecorridor peak (the verdict)

bare terrainlidar canopy + growth allowancelidar structuressatellite elevation

Position model: the pin snaps to one of 81 precomputed locations on a 5 m grid extending 20 m from the site pin. The faint square on the map is that valid footprint; the cyan line is the ground projection of the satellite bearing.

Data boundary: classified leaf-off vegetation and building returns come from the public USGS 3DEP 2017 lidar () along the first 170 m of each sightline. Trees have grown and storms have come through since 2017, which is what the growth allowance is for. The yellow map outline is the lidar area used. USGS 3DEP supplies terrain to 100 km. Standard 7/6-Earth-radius refraction is included.

Why the two charts can disagree: the horizon view is one eye at the pin, one degree at a time. The verdict treats the dish as a tube as wide as the safety corridor, so a branch a few feet away and slightly off to the side can block the dish without sitting on the satellite's exact bearing. Narrow the corridor to 1 ft and the two come much closer.

Look angles: computed for this site from the satellite's orbital slot at , on the WGS84 ellipsoid, without refraction.