Slashdot Mirror
Massive Mosaic of Canada
rvr writes "Thanks to compression technology that has reduced the file to 3.3 gigabytes and a collaboration between the Canadian Forest Service and the Canadian Space Agency called the 'Earth Observation for Sustainable Development of Forests', this gigantic image -- the highest-resolution image of Canada freely available -- can now be downloaded to your computer."
It had to be said. Even (especially!) if they can pacel out their bandwidth by making you contact contact "Jeff Dechka, Remote Sensing Data and Product Coordinator at the Canadian Forest Service's Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria at jdechka@pfc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca" to download it.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
since i just did a large project project on image compression techniques, i'm really curious to know what they did to get the 28:1 odd compression ratios. based on my (admittedly limited) playing around with jpeg 2000, this seems like it would be an ideal application (in fact, i'm fairly certain they could squeeze even more data into that space at equivalent quality). in my experiments, jpeg 2000 beat the snot out of everything else (using the lovely jasper toolkit)... i don't know of too many other formats which can achieve 100:1 compression ratios in natural images and still have the results be recognizable. either way, very cool for an image processing geek like myself.
this gigantic image -- the highest-resolution image of Canada freely available --
Everyone who thought that was a direct link to the actual image raise your hands :-)
Know the feeling? "Man, that's going to be the biggest Slashdotting ever! Poor Canadians! Must... click... link..."
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
The picture (or at least the thumbnail versions) contains all of New England, New York, Michigan and much of the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. And I think a parts of the rest of the northern border states.
But I for one welcome our new Canadian Overlords.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Bob: Do the theme, eh?
Doug [gives Great White North theme]
Bob: Good day, eh. Oh, hey, do our new movie theme, eh?
Doug [gives Great White North fanfare]
Bob: Beauty, eh? Good day, I'm Bob McKenzie, this is my brother Doug.
Doug: How's it going, eh?
Bob: Wait a second, you hoser, you can't spend all that cash on this big mosaic thing, eh? That's dad's beer money!
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
no really, I can
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I'm not sure if this is high-res enough for you, but you might want to try Terra Server.
It seems to work fairly well for US locations, and not work well for other (Canadian) searches.
Are high resolution satellite/aerial images available for other locations?
Yes. Do a google for your state/province and "GIS data". Most US states have some sort of FTP setup with elevation maps, aerial images, and topographic maps to download.
No, I don't expect to be able to buy hi-res images of Area 51, but was looking for my neighborhood.
Actually, I used to work for Space Imaging, and their conference demo was a 3D flyover of Area51 that had elevation and 1-meter resolution color imagery. To get a quickie on your neighborhood, check out Terraserver.
Also, are there ways of getting really nice poster prints of high resolution images?
www.mytopo.com
USGS extension office
Space Imaging has some famous stuff for sale as posters (pyramids, WTC site, etc.)
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti