NOAA Office of Satellite and Product Operations

GOES Eclipse Schedules

KOZ (KEEP OUT ZONE) / ECLIPSE
GOES satellites encounter two periods during the year in which they are in Earth's shadow. Known as the Eclipse (ECL) season, these periods require the spacecraft to be completely dependent upon batteries for a maximum of 72 minutes daily. Eclipses occur approximately from late February to mid-April, and from late August to mid-October.

GOES-13/14/15 - There is a significant risk of light from the sun directly entering the scanners and causing degraded products as the spacecraft enters and leaves the Earth's shadow, requiring a special algorithm to be applied to the Imager products. In some instances shifting or cancelling the frame is necessary. This is known as the "Stray Light Zone (SLZ)." The seasonal charts describe the GOES-East and GOES-West Imager and Sounder scan frames that are canceled or shifted due to SLZ.


Seasonal Charts:   Fall 2016 Schedule
GOES Fall Schedules (Excel file xls, xlsx or PDF)


GOES-West  –  GOES-15   (8/16/2016 – 10/14/2016)
  • Routine Imager (HTML)
    (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Routine Sounder (HTML)
    (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Both Imager and Sounder (Excel file xls or xlsx)


  • Previous Eclipse Schedules
  • Spring 2016
  • Fall 2015
  • Spring 2015
  • Fall 2014
  • GOES-East  –  GOES-13   (8/19/2016 – 10/15/2016)
  • Routine Imager (HTML)
      (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Routine Sounder (HTML)
      (Download Chart in Adobe PDF)
  • Both Imager and Sounder (Excel file xls or xlsx)


  • Full Disk Scan During Eclipse
    There will be no Full Disk Coverage for GOES East or GOES West
    this eclipse season since we will not have an outage of more
    than 15 minutes.