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Most Detailed Image Of Earth Yet
TomDM writes "BBC News has a story on how scientists created the most accurate and detailed image of our planet yet, composing the image from satellite data, and adjusting it for the correct colours. "
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..suprised to find out that the Earth, is in fact, flat.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have been taking pictures using my Kodak Advantix camera of the ground in 4ftx3ft areas and collaging them into a large, detailed map of the Earth's surface.
Because I am trying to keep this as up to date as possible, I reshoot any areas that change. I haven't gotten very far, mostly my yard and part of the driveway.
I wish we had access to that kind of data, as well as elevation data for the whole planet.
Corelating both, we could have a planetwide flying simulator, or even submarine simulator.
Then add the higher resolution satellite pictures to enrich the places where you have them, and we'd soon have a hugely interesting data set!
I did a proto browser like that years ago, correlating the ghhs coastline data set and the etopo5 elevation map (at 1 degree resolution; nothing). And thats still the only vectorial data you can get covering the whole planet, for free.
it's OUR planet anyway, why can't they release the data? it's not like the resolution is enought to have any military value anyway!
Wouldn't this have been a lot easier?
No security through obscurity: my password is goatse. Stop me before I troll again.
This is an image of what the ground looks like from the ground, not from space. Path radience effects the eye just like a camera. Not explained well in the article...
That is messed up. The have a link to the high res version of the "old view", but no links to the high res versions of the new-improved image. Does anyone have any links to a larger version?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Where can I get it in 2,048 by 1,536 resolution??
Look at the NASA MODIS site here if you want to actually see the pictures...
--
"Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around." - They Might Be Giants, "We Want a Rock"
Nasa has some High Res versions here.
;)
Yes.. you too can download a 410MB TIFF of the earth
I want a poster for my wall.
That would be rad.
Even better if they print it with light sensitve ink.
So when I turn out the lights I get the night version.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
...the holy grail of Risk boards.
Karma: Excer..ex...excellahhh...realll good (mostly affected by drinking not done in moderation)
This goes to the directory of the newest images.
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.
I believe this is the same project that was reported February 8th as "Blue Marble".
Anyone who wants to use this for xplanet (a very cool globe program for *nix) can. There's a nice 2400x1200 version floating around somewhere, that combined with Hans Ecke's scripts, will create just awsome images for your desktop.
This whole thing smells like PR for NASA so they can get an adequate budget. Using IR cameras to measure global warming, measuring the changes in the icecaps, that makes sense. But a big dorm-room poster? This is right up there with putting a camera on the Mars rover. Neat, but what did it accomplish?
What bugs me is that the Earth is made to look prettier than it is. Where are the cities? If you didn't know better, you'd think the planet's one big grassy plain with a desert in the middle. It's clear they made cosmetic touch-ups, right down to the cloud photos they chose to make the photo look more "typical."
And while it's great to see the planet without any clouds, if by "clouds" you mean "smog and pollution," then you might as well be editing out cities. You just don't end up with a meaningful view of the planet if you leave out how we've changed it.
This doesn't appear to be a useful, or even honest, project. It's more of a publicity stunt.
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
Last one out, turn off the light
Hmm, joke aside, this sentence sends a thrill down my spine, thinking of the day when human kind has screwed the planet up so badly that we have to move on.
I don't know about you, but last time I checked, Earth is still the best place to live. So let's take care of our home, while we still can.
Japan is lit mor brightly than Las Vegas, or anywhere else in the word for that matter. Talk about population density.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
But it's also incredibly apocalyptic, to me.
If my little 75-watt porch light contributes to light pollution enough to be visible from space, it really makes tangible the effect of the other kinds of pollution that that light must create. A tiny bit of coal here, a puff of gas there; without my (or anyone else's) thinking about it, it turns into something that's fucking visible from space.
So when the caption is "Last one out, turn off the light", all that does is drive home for me how even the tiniest decisions I make -- leaving the porch light on all night so robbers can't steal my luxuries -- affect the whole world.
Blimey, we're all killing eachother: cheerio, last one out, be a dear, turn off the light, eh?
For the record, if I'd known NASA was working on this, I would've reseeded my lawn. I didn't think anyone but the neighbors would notice the dead patches. My apologies...
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
From: eng
Subj: 1055CM STILL out of ink
Hey guys, the 36-inch color inkjet printer still seems to be out of ink. I thought you guys were going to come out and replace the cartridge two hours ago.
314-15-9265
I guess I'm just geographically ignorant, but I though New Zealand were those 2 "Islands" nest to OZ. Where is it actually supposed to be at?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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
Would be cool if someone would use these images to generate Earth 1.0 a la Snowcrash, for those who haven't read Snowcrash, Earth 1.0 was a utility that gave live feeds from satellites, you could see the clowds all over earth but also you could zoom in very deep and see people move around.
The last part is not feasable ofcourse because the static earth-images would be sitting on your drive, eating up a lot of space. But lower detail satellite images from the internet could be used to dynamically generate the cloud surface on top of the high detail images so zooming would be possible and it would almost be like Earth 1.0
I once saw a simular app in java but the graphics were quite bad.
Am I the only person that thinks things like this make cool posters? Any idea if you can buy one? Where?
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
For anyone who is in the know and has downloaded the high resolution pictures, can you explain what those glowing blue patches you see by the coasts are? They're especially prominent in the one with clouds, but there's a pretty bright one off the coast of Cuba and Florida too in the loudless one.
Considering this is supposed to be true color, I'm really curious, since I've never seen anything like these in normal pictures of the Earth from space. In the cloudy one it almost looks like someone spilled radioactive waste all over South America and Europe or something....
The explanation is: NASA didn't want to direct their cameras on Mordor (which we now know is locate in New Zealand) since Sauron might have taken control of the satellites. Where would we be then? I applaud NASA's foresight in this matter.
:-)
well...
alright, actually they're only cropped off on the BBC site, the original pictures are complete, so blame BBC
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
is the funniest thing I've seen on slashdot in months.
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Is this the way the earth would look in spring time for all regions, or in the wet time for all reagions, or in the summer for all regions, or when there is the most photosynthesis for all regions? Remember it's summer south of the equater when it is winter north of the equator. In central brazil it's the rainy season but in the north east it's the dry season. So what does it mean?
Well, it's cool anyway.
Nate
We've got troops in half the world, so the relative importance to an American of, say, Slovenia, is much higher than to an Aussie.
The flipside of your argument is that our responsibility to be aware of the world is proportional to our influence over it. Living in a democracy, it's no excuse to say "I never approved of this atrocity". So it starts to be pretty important that people know what's going on, say in Uzbekistan. And who we are going to bed with there. Many in the rest of the world are pissed off/amazed at how we allow our government to send military aid to regimes who are conducting mass murder (e.g. Turkey), or train/give loans to security forces in repressive, fanatical regimes (Saudi Arabia). They rightly conclude that popular ignorance lets our govt. get away with murder. So the responsibility to be more informed than everyone else is on our shoulders. In this respect, it doesn't matter how much geography a Canadian knows.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
I have a map of the United States. It's full scale. It says on the side: "one inch equals one inch." Last Summer I folded it.
-- Steven Wright
- passion
"I can see my house from here!"
Well, somebody had to say it.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/Blue Marble/
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
New Zealand is there. It's just the same color as the ocean, so it doesn't show up.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
This might be an older version of it, but it's good enough for me.
I'm assuming this is a rhetorical question?
If not, well... China. ( :
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.