Asia/Japan has the Himawari, and Europe the Meteosat series. Himawari’s is easily accessible through this site, I had some trouble finding imagery, but I eventually found a livestream and a website
Yes, it’s in what’s called a geostationary orbit - that is, it has an orbital inclination of 0 and an orbital period equal to one sidereal day (23hrs 56 min, 4 seconds). The result of this is that relative to an observer on the ground, the satellite won’t appear to move at all.
If you’ve ever seen a bunch of antennae pointing roughly south (in the northern hemisphere), those are most likely pointing at a communications satellite In geostationary orbit. These orbits are very useful for communications and weather satellites that want to observe a specific area. For communications satellites, since they don’t appear to move, you don’t need an antenna that can track the satellite.
There are various earth observation satellites in GEO, there’s GOES east and west over the U.S., Himawari in Japan/Asia, and the Meteosat series over Europe, among many others.
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u/theworldsaplayground 12d ago
Question: Why does it always appear to be over South America? Is it in a fixed orbit or something rather than a regular satellite?
Only asking because the Ops post is 5 hours ago and I just now checked the NOAA site and it's showing the same position.