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Space Shuttle Mission Images
fred_the_slow writes, "The German Remote Sensing Data Center has posted images from the ongoing Shuttle Mission. The resolution is amazing, as the pictures on this link show." Beautiful stuff! Takes a while for the images to download, but they're worth waiting for.
From what I remember, the ultra-large data sets that are being broadcast in realtime such as this and hyperspectral imagery, they use DLT arrays that run in parallel. I remember reading about a large array (64-256 drives or so) where they'd use 8 drives at a time to write (1 bit per drive) since the drives couldn't keep up with the stream otherwise. Numbers probably off, but that's the concept.
obviously moderated down by a chicagoan!
One problem with slashdot using mirrors is a copyright issue, since before they could mirror it, they would need permission to copy it. I would imagine this would slow down the process of getting the information out to everyone considerably.
At any rate, I am sure you can see Space from the Chinese Wall.
I've heard that if you squint, you can make out the Pacific Ocean. Seriously, those images don't look particularly high-resolution. The landform from the radar data didn't look anything like the photograph of the real land form. Does anyone know what the resolution of the mapping radar is?
> It's posted on a German site, so you'd better run it through Babelfish first. Ah, that's much better. Well, the radar used to produce the pictures was made in germany.
That's right. No Antarctis, and nothing around North Pole or Greenland. Nothing for about 80% of Finland, half of Sweden is missing, etc.
It's nice though, but I really was under the impression that they were scanning the whole Earth!
Hey, it's just a way of trying to appear koolinternethip. If your product sucks ass, sell the masses uncertainty related to the actual meaning of a buzzword.
-"Hey look it has an e, i and @ in the advertisement so it must like the best technology ever!"
-"I'd like to buy a vowel."
-"Sorry, we're out of e and i due to increased demand."
I saw this article which suggested there was a lot of interest in the eastern slopes of the Andes, which were said not to have been topo mapped before because of persistent cloud cover. I am sure this has NOTHING to do with the fact that the world's leading coca-producing regions are all there, and that the USA is sending a bunch of attack helicopters and "technical advisers" to Colombia.
But where do you think the DEMs (not contour files) for VistaPro _CAME_ from in the first place? They came from USGS topo maps which were created from aerial photos & is a long & tedious process. The USGS DEMs had a maximum resolution of 30m until very recently when they started to release 10m DEMs. But GLOBALLY, there was no comparable data. What the shuttle is doing is recording 1m resolution for the military, and releasing 30m data globally to the public. It's a whole lot better than the 1km data that's out there right now!
Slashdot == (currently) a legal way to DDoS other small unsuspecting sites on the internet.
See http://www.dfd.dlr.de/sr tm/html/scene_understanding_en.htm (when the /. effect is over...).
Idiot! The images are computer generated (you know what a computer is?) from 18 tera bytes of radar data (invisible, you know what radar is and invisible means?). The can make it pink on yellow if they like, or gold, or whatever algorithm they use for generating the images.
You gotta give this guy credit. Some very creative shit there. I wonder how long it took to compose?
/. is more enjoyable if you read some of the -1 AC shit. Some of these guys should be writing in Hollywood. Yea, yea, by writting this I am just encouraging the continual demise of /.
I set my view level to -1. Lately, with the lame ass shit being posted here I find
Any one have an updaye on the cool 3D fighting game, or the computer case covered in fur? How about another lame ass Star Wars rumor? I hear that Lucas is going to create a new Homosexual, Chinese, African American Irishman from from Stargon 6.
Flame on, moderate down.
you get a really great view of the cubs losing.
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
From the DASA web site, the parent company of Dornier Satellite Systems, which was the co-creator of the radar:
"Up to now, the best global database has provided only every 1,000 meters a point with an accuracy of 100 meters in height. The SRTM sensors will provide every 30 meters a point surveyed with an accuracy of 6 meters in height. "
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Nice images, although I think the high resolution images at the NASA site are more impressive (there's a 20MB TIFF image of part of the Great Wall that's... whew!). But why on Earth did they make them in GIF format? I would have thought that the content of the images would have made JPEG a more appropriate format. Will Unisys come knocking now?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What would be the point of mapping the earth in a hi-res fashion if there were CLOUDS in the way? :)
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
One difference between the GWoC and I196 is that the Great Wall sticks up in the air. Thus, it can cast a shadow which will enhance its visiblity from space. Though the dimensions of interstate highways and the great wall are roughly equivalent, interstate highways do not cast shadows. It may be possible that the GWoC is visible in early morning or late evening local time as it casts a shadow that's much larger than itself. Another thing, Interstates are not generally built along ridges, and the Great Wall of China does follow ridges. To compare a highway nestled in a valley with a wall mounted on a ridge is probably not right. Note that I'm not claiming that the GWoC is naked-eye visible, but I do think that it can be much more visible than interstate highways are from space.
Why would Slashdot want to do it at all?
Caching websites takes disk space.
Serving cached websites takes bandwidth.
What does VA (Or whoever the fuck owns slashdot today) pay for? Disk space and bandwidth... Throw in the potential legal problems and the business decision becomes pretty clear. Plus someone would need to code up the proxy and integrate it with SLASH.
What would they have to gain? Not a whole lot. Slashdot users expect some of the links to go down for awhile. The linked sites probably wouldnt pay for the service.
-BW
It's an impressive concept, mapping the terrain of the Earth so exactly, but frankly I've generated better looking images with Vista Pro on my Amiga!
Vista Pro was(is?) cool... it came with contour files for real places, like the Grand Canyon and Olympus Mons(!), and you could set up animated fly-bys and stuff... nice!
It's posted on a German site, so you'd better run it through Babelfish first. Ah, that's much better.
[And for those of you with no sense of humor, this is not a time to hit the moderation button. Even though the site's slashdotted and you have nothing better to do.]
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Why is there a big fuzzy area just north of Las Vegas?
A friend of mine is involved in the project putting up reflectors in farm fields at known locations and heights to calibrate this system(using a $60,000 military survey GPS system). The resolution is amazing at 1 meter square, and a height resolution if 30cm!! (just under a foot)
A big part of this project is for he military; you will never seen a large portion of the high resolution data as, in theory, it can be used by armies to find good encampment places, bluffs, etc. Currently USGS data surveys have a resolution of 1km x 1km with a height accuracy of around 5 meters, so this is a huge improvement.
-Adam
J. Willard Marriott
Good timber does not grow with ease; the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.
Less than it cost to make Waterworld. Deal.
-- The meek shall inherit the Earth. In very small plots, about 6 feet by 3.
I am.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I think the idea behind the urban legend is that the unaided eye can see it from orbit, which is not true. And if it were true, there would be many other things you could see, like highways in the US. The image you linked to, while interesting, is a radar image.
With the right equipment, you can see people from space.
"e-Network" translation: electronic network
Holy shlt!! Can't people come up with something that doesn't start with e or i!?!!?!
This is getting mind-numbing! The marketing departments don't have a clue what they are naming, and PHBs buying the stuff don't know what they are buying. But if it says "e" in front of it, it must be "high-tech".
Back to that commercial for ITT Technical Institute: "Have you ever worked with anything... high-tech?"
Me: "You mean like a phone?"
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
A few days ago, I was reading about how all the info from the scanning would be easily in the multi-terabyte range, if not more. I think what would really kick ass would be a story on the logistics of the IT setup NASA is using. Just how big are the disk farms that nasa is using for this stuff? How do they handle the real-time broadcast and subsequent storage such a ridiculously large amount of data? I think stuff like that would make a cool story in itself.
Is it just me? or does the 3d image remind you of vista pro too? for those who don't know what it is, it was a cheesy 3d package for creating landscapes(a mountain, a valley, w/ a lake and whatnot) then flying through it.
Lots of other interesting photos are here .
I heard that the only thing you can see from space with the naked eye is the light at the top of the Luxor in Las Vegas. Yep thats what i heard.
and how much did they cost?
Just knowing that our cruise missiles are now targeted even more accurately. Take That, Saddam!!
nice, clear pictures, but I wonder how much postprocessing they actually did. The pictures would have looked a little more realistic if they actually showed the clouds...
As I sit here trying to follow the link unsuccessfully, the following came to mind: the web site serving these pictures is not equipped to deal with the sort of traffic this seemingly innocent Slashdot article has generated, and, more than likely, the poor scientists there are getting absolutely nothing useful accomplished. The web server is probably using the same uplink as the rest of the machines at the site, and if I can't even get through to the web server, then I really doubt the scientists are able to get OUT to the internet. I wish the Slashdot community (and those people who select which articles to post) would think about this. These people are trying to conduct SCIENCE and they are providing these (very LARGE) images as a free service out of kindness. Our curiosity is no justification for crippling their operation for hours.
I'll look at the pictures next week, after the mob has left. I'll be considerate.
Interesting false fact. You cannot see the great wall of China from Space. Think about it for a minute. A brick Wall probably no wider than 50 feet wide in some places, in the mountains of China, built thousands of years ago can be seen; but an interstate highway cannot be seen streatched out across the Grteat Plains of America? I think not. I heard that this was a joke that was started during the Mercury Program at NASA. Some that was orbiting Earth said, sarcastically, "I can see the Great Wall of China!" (or something to that effect) as they were over China. Somehow the general public found out about this and thought that it was true. Sorry, highly unprobable. I had a history teacher in High School who said that he had taught this for years until I brought this to his attention. Sorry Dr. Montford. Sorry, I don't have any source for these statements, just that I have heard them or read them somewhere. Peace Out... KKPsi
I love the smell of napalm in the morning....
You're not the only one that get's bashed. I get bashed too! Mainly because of my how I horribly do spelling just by an itty bitty off. =P
try the Nasa site (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/) for more up todate images .. Bahia and Nothern cape ( SA ) were done yesterday!! Nothing in europe yet.
Some technical infos from the operators of the German web-site: - since the launch of the shuttle mission on friday we had to manage more than 3 million user accesses, - as NASA-JPL links directly to our site, the load is distributed such, that the maximum access being recorded at local midnight MET, the best time for downloading i still between 7 and 8 a.m. MET. see: www.dfd.dlr.de/stats/srtm/ - we have agreed upon with NASA-JPL that they will mirror our complete SRTM-site next time, so that U.S. users do not have to use the transatlantic bottleneck (we know that our data traffic has significantly enhanced the data load by 30 Mb/s H.J. Lotz-Iwen DLR-DFD - the
Some infos from the german web site operators: - we had to suffer an unexpected interest of more than 3 million accesses to our SRTM webpages since friday - we have agreed upon with NASA-JPL, that they will mirror our pages, so U.S. users will not have to use the transatlantic bottleneck - indeed the data files are big, and so will be the video animations that follow now, but if You want quality you must accept that - all imagery will be kept on the server, so you can download it later (the mission ends next tuesday/wednesday) if you are upset with the recent status
Note that Google (www.google.com) caches pages in precisely this manner. Think of it as a proxy or a cache. Your ISP doesn't need to obtain written consent from every content provider on the 'Net in order to set up a proxy server. Why should this be any different? The content itself is left unmolested and they aren't making an effort to lay claim to it or keep the viewer from going to the original source.
Though I do remember reading that Malda's chief concern with doing mirroring/caching of this sort of thing was copyright. But hey, if Google is doing it, why not Slashdot?
when i downloaded those 7 MB hires images, they ended up being 1-3 MB TIFF images. someone's exaggerating, or else they ended up replacing the images with smaller ones or something.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
not to sound like i'm complaining or anything.
the big hires images are still great. onto my background they go!
that's what i get for submitting before i preview...
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
I refuse to buy another Space Shuttle for personal use until they make the switch. Thanks for saying what was undoubtedly on all our minds. You are a courageous spokesperson for the indominatable Linux revolution. I salute you.
**>>BELCH
More like still recovering from the spammer attack. :/
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Did you notice the vast quantity of *GREEN* in that image? I did. I suspect that on average an image of the USA from that perspective would be considerable more *grey*.
We really should be paying some attention to this, folks.
Well, I realize that we're arguing "what you've read" vs. "what I've read", but IIRC you can see the Great Wall from space...sorta. Here's the deal: At certain times of the day, during certain parts of the year, the Great Wall throws a looong shadow (several hundred feet wide). Now if you are looking at the right place at the right time under immaculately clear skies, your eye can tell that there's something there. At this point a neat and well documented mind trick comes into play: The brain knows that there's supposed to be a wall down there, and it "fills in the gaps" to make it visible. It's not really a mental fabrication, because the mind is just extrapolating from the little bit of information it has. On the other hand, it's not really seeing it either, because it's just under the normal limit of perceptability.
:)
Supposedly this was confirmed by a shuttle crew a number of years ago in an impromptu experiment. Three astronauts who knew the exact location of the wall looked for it as they passed over, and two of them claim to have seen it. Two other astronauts, who didnt know the exact location of the wall, looked until the area went out of view and never saw a thing.
So the correct answer to the question of whether or not the Great Wall is viewable from space is: "It depends on who you ask"
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Another project going on (for the last time) is Earthkam (on space.com), Digital camera in the shuttle, schools take pictures. Not quite as cool as the radar imagery, but still really cool.
Here is short promo from 3com Space Shuttle Images Of Earth To Reside On 3Com e-Network For Internet Age Education
It all depends on what altitude you are orbiting at. Mercury orbited at a much lower altitude than the current fleet of orbiters and more than likely, could see much more detail of the Earth's surface.
What is really interesting is night. At low altitude, you can make out some of the major cities from all the light pollution. National Geographic had a section on this recently. It was pretty neat to see the US lit up like a Christmas tree while one could definitely tell where North Korea was because of the near complete absence of light.
SP
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
Comparing the data from passes at different times will show the change in elevation as a nice contour map.
Changes in elevation are closely related to the earth stresses that are released by earthquakes and vulcanism.
Such a change-of-height map should make regions that have just had (or are about to have) earthquakes or volcanic eruptions stand out like a forest fire.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Let's see - 7Mb multiplied by a few thousand bored slashdotters equals how many gigabytes? Yeah, that should shut them down for a while!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
I read that you can see the great wall of China. You can also see lots of other things. It all depends how high you are of course. With a visual resolution of 30 arcseconds, this means that it should be visible at somewhere in the region of 100 miles (so is this "in space" or not?). Or have I got my maths totally wrong.
Seems like the last few "interesting link" posts that have been made, the site goes down in oh, 10 or 15 minutes. Slashdot should take all that big money they've been getting, and buy some big-ass to mirror all the pages they link to.
There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Then again, i suppose the astronauts could just get together and makeup whatever story they wanted - it's not like we're going to go and check ourselves.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Now they are taking forever to load, since you posted the link to that poor unsuspecting site. Man, I wish you guys would just quit doing that without organizing some mirrors first.
What the heck, here's another link (don't want to call it a mirror, since it's the original): http://www.nasa.gov/newsinfo/srtm_images.html
--Seen
"I used to be a dilettante. Then I thought I'd try something else for a while."