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.

Comments

Google does it

[Fastolfe]

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?

Re:hmmm

[Imabug]

the primary purpose of doing radar imaging is so that you *can* see through clouds. Radar imaging was also used to map the surface of Venus, where all those clouds really get in the way.

radar imaging can also show what's beneath the ground to a certain depth. IIRC, radar imaging was also used to discover the remnants of ancient roads and trade routes crossing the african and middle eastern deserts that had been buried for centuries.

Re:7MB Files - no wonder it's a slow download

[Imabug]

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.

Re:7MB Files - no wonder it's a slow download

[Imabug]

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...

Agreed

[Skip666Kent]

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.

Re:Still no posts?

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

More like still recovering from the spammer attack. :/
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Concrete

[dparker]

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.

Re:You can't see the wall of china from space

[BrianH]

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" :)

EARTHKAM

[just someone]

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

Actually, you can.

[ShawnP]

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

I hope they do it again next year.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.

7MB Files - no wonder it's a slow download

[intmainvoid]

The Nasa Site says that the images are downloadable as 7Mb zip files.

Let's see - 7Mb multiplied by a few thousand bored slashdotters equals how many gigabytes? Yeah, that should shut them down for a while!

And what I've read

[luckykaa]

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.

Slashdot needs mirrors

[Teman Clark-Lindh]

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.

Re:hmmm

[Detritus]

The images are created from C-band and X-band radar signals, not from visible light or infrared. Water vapor will slightly attenuate the signals but not reflect them.

You can't see the wall of china from space

[intmainvoid]

I read an interview last week with an astronaut who had taken photos from space - he said that the old story that you could see the wall of china from space is just a myth.

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.

Long time to load, eh?

[Seenhere]

No, Roblimo, those images only took a long time to load when you were the only one in the western hemisphere loading them.

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