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This happens to be the subject of today's APOD.

Actually almost all of the MODIS data used to produce this image is available for free, in its original raw format.

I've ordered lots of data from the MISR instrument (which is similar to MODIS, and is on the same satellite), and basically you just pick the swaths you want and give them your email address. Later they send you email with an ftp site where you can download that swath. You can get as much as you want if you have the bandwidth. Be warned: these aren't JPEG images, they're raw HDF files, so you'll need to download some specialized tools or write some code to parse them.

http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Blue Marble/

BTW - Here is your wall paper. 2048x1024 JPG ~233kB

All the data, seperated into hemispheres and at 1 pixel = 1 km resolution (21600x21600 pixel images) is freely available from NASA at:

ftp://gloria2-f.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/stockli/

The images are split into versions with or without shaded topography and bathymetry, there's an ice cap map, a landcover map, topography/bathymetry maps, a cloud layer, and the city lights image.

They're in RAW format ("Open As.." in Photoshop).
Be prepared to wait a while for them to open.

Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

Some parts of the US are already available

Go get Xplanet, from xplanet.sourceforge.net, and the 2048x1024 JPEGs from visibleearth.nasa.gov, and hack a couple of scripts to run the thing from cron, on the root window.

You'll get the coolest desktop background. The "land surface, ocean color, and sea ice" image is beautiful; the the "city lights" image looks rather false, though. Don't get the clouds image, you can get "live" clouds with a bit more hackery --think of it as a light version of Hiro's "Earth" widget in Snow Crash :-)

I wrote a script for getting a view from an viewpoint that goes round the earth every 6 hours and update the screen every 5-10 min. I wrote another to fetch an image of the clouds from the Xplanet page, which is updated every 3 hours, IIRC, from real data from the weather satellites (details and tips on the Xplanet page, or you can mail me if you want my scripts).

Check out a screenshot of my laptop's background, using this images (low quality scaled pic, sorry, we're very bandwidth challenged). Anyway, it sure beats a picture of the cats :-)

go to This web site [http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/]. They make excellent desktop pictures! BlackGriffen Basking in the glow of the karma whoring light... :D

Actually, they should be ashamed to sell that as suitable for heavy duty. This is freaking 2002, not 1992. An UltraSparc III has 8 MB of L2 cache. A MIPS R12000 has (or can have) the same amount. IBM Power4s have similar amounts. (USIII has 32K instruction and 64K data L1 cache, and R12k has 32K of L1, for the sake of comparison.)

I admit I don't have any hard data to back this up, but it's my suspicion that it's in large part the large L2 cache that causes Sparcs to thrash Intels at some tasks. There's a good page on some processor design considerations at SETI@UNC.

Where can I get it in 2,048 by 1,536 resolution??
Right here. (9mb TIFF from nasa)

Gee, some of these pics are so lovely, they must be violating an Apple patent on translucent blue thingys or something...

;-)

Gee, some of these pics are so lovely, they must be violating an Apple patent on translucent blue thingys or something...

;-)

Get the BIG images here.

ftp://visibleearth.nasa.gov/pub/EARTHVIZ/

Just don't tell them I told you...

Xix.

I believe that this all stems from work done by NASA's
Blue Marble project.

If you go to the site, they have some great, high-resolution images of the earth during the day, night, by hemisphere, etc. A great source for desktops or just browsing for fun.

This goes to the directory of the newest images.

Nasa has some High Res versions here.

Yes.. you too can download a 410MB TIFF of the earth ;)

Look at the NASA MODIS site here if you want to actually see the pictures...

Look at the NASA MODIS site here if you want to actually see the pictures...

The THEMIS thermal infrared and visible imaging spectrometer aboard the Odyssey spacecraft successfully turned on today and started its mapping mission.

According to the linked article, the THEMIS imager was turned on back on Nov 2, last year, and had already produced a number of images. I suspect that you mean that they're now at the point where they can turn it on and leave it operating on a regular basis. Or at least, that they are really considering the spacecraft itself ready to start mapping.

The only additional information I can find is on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft site that indicates that they haven't even finished calibration yet, but does state (or misstate?) that the THEMIS camera system was turned on today. It also states that there are other instruments (the gamma ray spectrometer at least) that were turned on for apparently the first time today.

The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) is the successor to Hubble. It is scheduled to launch in 2009.

I realize both the weather balloons and Helios are just means to an end, but using these things for broadband internet would be way cooler than the US's second-rate cell technology, which is what they want to use the weather balloons for.

Dutch roll diagram
The second oscillation is known as the Dutch roll (named for the motion of an ice skater). According to one NASA research pilot, an airplane in the Dutch roll mode "resembles a snake slithering." Obviously, this is not a desirable way to travel off the ground. This complex oscillation combines several factors including yaw, roll, dihedral effect, lift, and drag. In a Dutch roll, the airplane's nose typically rotates through about three degrees. When an airplane tries to find the runway, there is only about one degree of margin for safe runway touchdowns.

Dutch roll diagram
The second oscillation is known as the Dutch roll (named for the motion of an ice skater). According to one NASA research pilot, an airplane in the Dutch roll mode "resembles a snake slithering." Obviously, this is not a desirable way to travel off the ground. This complex oscillation combines several factors including yaw, roll, dihedral effect, lift, and drag. In a Dutch roll, the airplane's nose typically rotates through about three degrees. When an airplane tries to find the runway, there is only about one degree of margin for safe runway touchdowns.

All you need to look at is a picture of earth at night, showing how much it's glowing. Do you think the surface temperature of the earth is anything like it was 200 years ago? We're burning up a LOT of energy.

2. Furthermore, land covers only 1/3 of the earth's surface. The other 2/3 is the ocean. Funnily enough, scientists haven't measured the temperature of the ocean over the past 100 years - there are generally only temperature stations located on the land.

Uhhh...they have buoys in the ocean (as well as blimps, satellites, etc).

3. NASA satellites (which have been measuring the temperature of one of the atmospheres of the planet - I forget it's name, but it's about 1km above the surface of the planet) shows that the planet has actually been cooling down since the records have recorded. How is it that the planet has been warming up yet the atmosphere cooling down? And remember, these statistics are taken for the entire planet, not just the area over which is land.

Apparently NASA is not aware of this. Funny thing is, their researchers believe the opposite.

The previous comment is completely off-topic, and should be moderated accordingly.

Let's clear this up once and for all: despite what you may have learned in school, where these environmental issues are comingled and bandied about interchangeably for political purposes, ozone depletion and global warming are entirely different animals. It's a shame that they are ever confused. It shows that people aren't really interested in the facts: each side wishes to blame the other as either "not caring" or "scaremongering."

Ozone depletion has been shown to be a result of chloroflurocarbons escaping (although they are heavier than air) into the upper atmosphere and breaking apart ozone molecules. Ozone depletion was much more universally accepted in the scientific community than the "other" environmental media darling, global warming.

Global warming, contrary to just about everything you see on the news, is NOT universally accepted in the scientific community. In fact, most of the data on which the alarming reports are based are self-contradictory (the data, not the reports). Some temperature data reporting stations show alarming increases, others don't.

Here's a great example of data that you WON'T see reported on the news, although when I first saw it, I thought it was really interesting:
Global Carbon Monoxide Measurements

At first you might just think, what does carbon monoxide have to do with Global Warming? LOTS! In any combustion process (like cars making carbon dioxide gas, one of the so-called "greenhouse gases") carbon monoxide is a byproduct. The highest concentrations of carbon monoxide in the environment show where the worst MAN-MADE greenhouse gas offenders are.

Well, as it turns out, naturally caused FOREST FIRES in South America and Africa completely DWARF the "industrialized" world's CO production! But don't take MY word for it: look at the satellite data yourselves in the above link.

I highly encourage all of you to be SKEPTICAL of everything you've ever been taught or read, without finding and looking at the data yourselves.

You're thinking about the Orion project, which was proposed in the 70s. It was quietly dropped, and I think it's safe to say that it will never come about, given humanity's disillusionment with nuclear bombs. Not to mention the impracticality of the design, compared to the alternatives.

Saying we will sail to the stars can be likened to the inventor of the zepplin saying that we will have mass crossings of the atlantic via deridgible.

Not even the ultra skeptical Nasa believs this solar sail stuff, which is why they are working on the REAL way that people will colonize the stars, with next generation propulsion systems.

These new systems are to chemical rockets as the sails of sea ships are to the jet; profoundly differnent and unpredicted by the "scientists" and sailors of old.

The only people who need Linux to run on old hardware are the Luddites who refuse to part with their old equipment, and they are nothing but an albatross around the neck of the Linux community

NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database has a large number of reported incidents where cellular telephones, and other electronic devices, have caused interference with aircraft communications and navigation equipment.

If you're not sure whether your environment is dusty enough to require a PC with passive cooling, use this to find out: Dust Flux Monitor Instrument

Gore pushed a program called the Digital Earth, which has subsequently collapsed under its own weight, and the arrival of President Bush. Triana, a satellite that was supposed observe the Earth from L1, has been postponed because the International Space Station has priority over shuttle flights.

The Earth Observatory started as a collaboration between a few outreach specialists (government speak for a combination of marketing and education) and our scientist bosses to make NASA Earth science more available to the public, since NASA has A LOT of very interesting data that's almost impossible to get at.

Gore pushed a program called the Digital Earth, which has subsequently collapsed under its own weight, and the arrival of President Bush. Triana, a satellite that was supposed observe the Earth from L1, has been postponed because the International Space Station has priority over shuttle flights.

The Earth Observatory started as a collaboration between a few outreach specialists (government speak for a combination of marketing and education) and our scientist bosses to make NASA Earth science more available to the public, since NASA has A LOT of very interesting data that's almost impossible to get at.

If I'm right in my assumption, it should be possible to build an arbitrary stack of layers (with reduced efficiency) for any color ranges you care to deal with. It might be possible to make a camera that has a special layer to pick up the 700nm wavelength that chlorophyll absorbs line to determine plant health for use in agriculture.

I suppose it could be stacked the other way, but that would probably be a much larger engineering challenge.

--Mike--

Cameras have been sensing depth with infra-red for years. It's called auto-focus. All this camera has added is recording that data along with the rgb. There is a nifty little method of scanning film location for later 3D reconstruction using Lidar that has already been used in films for some time. Lidar is often also implemented for geographical surveys by folks such as NASA. The resolution of the ZCAM sounds very limited and will not be useful for truly realistic keying. Possibly guy-in-front-of-weathermap applications, but it doesn't look like it can handle fine hair, water, or other transparencies that most keying software can today. If you don't want to deal with a green/blue screen, there's also the option of a "difference key" that compares the shot without anyone in it to the shot when your person walks in. Some systems can now do real time insertions this way. The ZCAM still won't give convincing film quality compositing results. With the advances in photogrammetry and it's applications in movies, I don't think that ZCAM has much use potential

Freeze-dried astronaut ice cream, available from NASA, science museums, or camping goods store. You could even include a note about wanting to travel to the stars with her/him.

On "This Old Geek hosted by McGyver" Feb 29th (not availiable on all PBS stations, ask your parents for permission first.)

>The interesting thing will be whether they are a different evolutionary track, the origin of the evolutionary track we're on, or a different branch of the evolutionary track.

They (if by they you refer to the crabs, mussels, and worms) are merely species of crabs, mussels, and worms that at some time in the past became adapted to living in a different environment. They're no different in this respect from any other species.

The article was a little unclear:
;"Now that we have them here, we are studying their rate of primary production (the rate of
;carbon fixation) in that environment, where there is no sunlight and they survive by
;chemosynthesis," Childress told NewsFactor."

Actually the crabs, mussels, and worms do not directly get their energy from the hydrogen sulfide. That's the job of chemoautotrophic bacteria, who are the real freaks. These bacteria use the H2S as their energy source (this is where the 'primary production' happens); they are in turn the base of the 'food chain' in the vent communities. See a NASA page or a page from U of Georgia for more.

..in mpeg and mov format - worth it if you (like me) cant even see your country in the main two pics!

They've already had their DARPA contracts, and what have they contributed? No-exec patches for Linux. That's about it.

They need to be actively involved in the security community; not just post a message when they get funding. I think we'd see much greater success.

• 114 moderator-approved posts to securityfocus.com mailing lists.
• 48 publications and citations to our work on the USENIX site.
• I served on the USENIX Security 1999 program committee.
• I was the publicity chair for the New Security Paradigms Workshop for three years.
• My first post to the Linux Security Audit Project in 1998.

Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase

At least two of the satellites involved--Terra [with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument] and Landsat 7 [with the Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+)]--have an orbital revisit of once every 16 days. Due to the field of view, low resolution data - 250 km per pixel (MODIS) - is produced every day or so. Medium resolution (15 meters per pixel, ETM+) every 16 days (well, maybe 9). IKONOS, which provides 1 meter data, is a commerical mission, and I don't know the specifics, but the revisit time is even less frequent.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/AM1/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Landsat/

and in response to the target remark, we are no longer allowed to post labelled satellite images of NASA centers.

More cool related imagery (shameless plug): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarb le/

At least two of the satellites involved--Terra [with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument] and Landsat 7 [with the Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+)]--have an orbital revisit of once every 16 days. Due to the field of view, low resolution data - 250 km per pixel (MODIS) - is produced every day or so. Medium resolution (15 meters per pixel, ETM+) every 16 days (well, maybe 9). IKONOS, which provides 1 meter data, is a commerical mission, and I don't know the specifics, but the revisit time is even less frequent.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/AM1/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Landsat/

and in response to the target remark, we are no longer allowed to post labelled satellite images of NASA centers.

More cool related imagery (shameless plug): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarb le/

At least two of the satellites involved--Terra [with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument] and Landsat 7 [with the Enhanced Thematic Mapper plus (ETM+)]--have an orbital revisit of once every 16 days. Due to the field of view, low resolution data - 250 km per pixel (MODIS) - is produced every day or so. Medium resolution (15 meters per pixel, ETM+) every 16 days (well, maybe 9). IKONOS, which provides 1 meter data, is a commerical mission, and I don't know the specifics, but the revisit time is even less frequent.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/AM1/
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/Landsat/

and in response to the target remark, we are no longer allowed to post labelled satellite images of NASA centers.

More cool related imagery (shameless plug): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarb le/

In related news, the Government also declared that the Sky is Blue, Bill Gates is Rich, and that Governments spend money on obvious surveys.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the Government has really done research on blue sky. Don't speak to louder or they might reconsider extending their clue finding process on why Bill Gates is so rich. :D

The Outer Planets program is a specific program that is in charge of the Pluto and Europa missions. It does not include the missions you're thinking of (Galileo, Cassini, Voyager, Pioneer), although, confusingly, those missions did go to the outer planets.

As an aside, Galileo, Voyager, et al. are all powered by RTGs (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators), as were the Viking Mars landers. They wouldn't have been able to perform their missions at all without them, except possibly for Viking. If I'm reading the article correctly, these are the sorts of nuclear technologies that the administration plans to support. There's an informative page on them at this page [jpl.nasa.gov].

The mix of systems isn't necessarily a bad thing since each system was (ostensibly) chosen for its particular task. I was unable to find any information on the systems running avionics or which OS the attitude control system that went belly-up was running. I'm curious - any project managers out there know the answer?

Some of these systems are Russian in design, which has hampered my search since I don't grok the language. The Russians have long experience with putting stuff up that works forever - be nice to know what sort of hardware/software they use. Their systems are home-grown on the ISS - except for a few boxen for Russian crew. BTW, all PC-type boxes on the ISS are ThinkPads with an odd terminal or two floating around for good measure.

Anyone interested in picking apart the station would benefit greatly from International Space Station Evolution Data Book (PDF), which can also be viewed in it's google-rendered HTML format.

Cutting funding to NASA which has pure science and exploration as it's primary goal makes sense to Conservatives because they see it as science which doesn't create wealth.

Pure science and exploration are the primary goals of NASA?Seems to me that according to NASA's mission statement that they want to do more practial application than pure research (2 of their 3 primary goals are mostly practical applications...)

And you obviously don't know jack about conservatives if you think that they are only interested in things that create wealth.The primary agenda of most conservatives that I know (myself included) is reducing the size and scope of government.

This promises to be one of the brightest supernova in a long time. I hope they point the hubble torwards it.

There is an excellent site that will track the progress of this supernova here

Space.com has an article about hypernova here. More detail about hypernova mechanics are here and here

If they can catch a Gamma-Ray Burst with this object, then this will be a pretty big deal.