Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Sharpest Ever Global Earth Map

Posted by Zonk on from the globcover-plus-google-maps-equals-bliss dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "The GLOBCOVER project, started by the European Space Agency (ESA), has a very simple goal. It will create the most detailed portrait of the Earth's land surface with a resolution three times sharper than any previous satellite map. The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite. To create this sharp map, the GLOBCOVER project will analyze about 20 terabytes of data gathered by the European satellite. When it's completed, the map will have numerous uses, 'including plotting worldwide land use trends, studying natural and managed ecosystems and modelling climate change extent and impacts.'"

17 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. 'hello mum' by thegoldenear · · Score: 5, Funny

    time to put something interesting on the roof for when the sat passes over

    1. Re:'hello mum' by PopeAlien · · Score: 4, Funny

      And it's also time to send out notice to the Californians: no more nude sunbathing.

      you accidentally put the word no in there..
      its a minor typo, but it really should be "notice to Californians: more nude sunbathing".

      --
      air and light and time and space
    2. Re:'hello mum' by Gulthek · · Score: 5, Funny

      Your joke is one line too long.

    3. Re:'hello mum' by Reaperducer · · Score: 5, Funny

      The satellite imagery for this is being recorded at a resolution of 300 m. For comparison, the most zoomed in you can get on GoogleMaps is 2 m per a pixel.

      But 300 is more than 2, so it must be better. That's why we're all salivating for 64-bit Minesweeper. Because it will be better than 32-bit Minesweeper.

      Haven't you learned anything from TV commercials?
      Digital is always better than analog, even when it isn't.
      More is always better than less, even when it isn't.
      More candy. More soda. More monkeys. More thermonuclear weapons.

      --
      -- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
    4. Re:'hello mum' by sootman · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm gonna put a giant mirror on my roof so I can see what this satellite looks like.

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    5. Re:'hello mum' by jericho4.0 · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Hi. My names Chris, I'm your neighbour from down the road......No, we've never met...Yeah, sorry about my dog, I'll try to keep her out of your yard...Well, anyway, there's this satellite ppicture being taken tomorrow, and I was wondering if I might convince you to join me and the other neighbours in trying to make a picture on our roofs.....Yeah, in space.....Yes, the internets will have it.... You will? Cool!....The picture? OK, uh...,here it is, but please understand, it's funny to a good chunk of the internet community, who are quite familiar with it, and I, uh..Oh, forget it.

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  2. Medium? by brianmf · · Score: 5, Funny

    The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite.

    Surely the High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer would be more appropriate?

  3. MERIS by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 5, Funny
    The image acquisition will be done throughout 2005 and use the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument of the Envisat environmental satellite

    Niles will be happy to hear she's orbiting the planet...

    --

    Obliteracy: Words with explosions

  4. First thing we're all looking for ... by SamSeaborn · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can see my house!

  5. I don't understand by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 4, Informative
    The image data for World Wind is based on a publicly-available global 30 meter resolution mosaic made from Landsat imagery. This satellite making this map is said to have 300 meter resolution. Wouldn't that make it much worse?

    (BTW, I *highly* recommend checking out World Wind if you haven't seen it. It is one of the most awesome programs ever to exist, bar none.)

    --
    main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    1. Re:I don't understand by Kphrak · · Score: 4, Informative

      (BTW, I *highly* recommend checking out World Wind if you haven't seen it. It is one of the most awesome programs ever to exist, bar none.)

      Unless you're running a non-Microsoft operating system. Guess I'll have to wait until I get home.

      --

      There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
  6. I want my planet! by Renegade+Lisp · · Score: 5, Informative
    That looks all very well, but if you dig a little deeper into that site, you'll come across the page where ESA describes its licensing terms. This data is only gonna be given to (a) scientists who are deemed serious by ESA, and who will report twice a year about their findings, and (b) to commercial users at "market rates".

    Well but isn't this data for which I've paid with my tax euros already? Why does the public who financed it not get free access to that data?

    While we're at it, can other Slashdotters perhaps point to links of freely available satellite imagery? Is there any kind of systematic coverage of the planet we live on which is freely available to everyone who does happen to live here?

    1. Re:I want my planet! by d-Orb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You see, I work with data from both ESA and NASA for Earth Observation. And many of the people of the communities which would be served by these data are annoyed by the attitude. The way NASA works is to produce a number of products for scientific and research based work, and chuck'em into some web site. You go and download. ESA, on the other hand, requires you to write a proposal, which is peer reviewed and blah blah blah. Eventually, they send you a bunch of CDs with the data you didn't want, 2 years later than expected and to an address in Italy when you wanted them in the UK (personal experience). They claim the peer review stage and proposal submission help to show decision makers (politicos) in member states the useful and brilliant things people do with the technology they invested their cash on. The result is an infrautilisation of the ESA data, or it's very limited use in research environments.

      On the other hand, NASA gives the data away, people download it, piss about with it for a few days, and from time to time, you get businesses using it, people realising they can get a paper out of it... Essentially, it gets used.

      To be fair with ESA, they are making efforts to streamline the processes, but management seems to work that way. Due to its transnational nature, ESA is a bit like the EU: no country wants to pay in, but everybody wants subsidies, contracts... ESA is just the same, which is sad. A far stronger scientific presence at the top would greatly improve things...

  7. Re:Google it up! by Uruk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And what about Area 51, the Green Zone in Baghdad, and all of the nifty places on the earth that we don't typically get to see via satellite photos?

    How do they filter those images out, anyway? These satellites have much better views than the typical U2 spy plane - is this a tacit agreement between defense and the satellite operating company, or does the defense department get a crack at the images before they're released to the public?

    --
    -- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
  8. Re:vegetation by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful


    The fact is, there is more vegetation on the planet now than there was 100 years ago

    I call bullshit.

    State your references or admit you're pulling 'facts' out of your ass.

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  9. 300m 15-bands... great for analysis, not pictures by PenguinOpus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Reading the article, it really is 300m/pixel. This is 400x lower resolution than the 15m Landsat data that is available as a basemap in Keyhole, Google Maps, and other providers.

    The reason this data is interesting is its 15-band nature and the amount of analysis and extraction that can be done from it.

    For pretty pictures, there are plenty of better sources.

  10. Re:Get Nasa WorldWind by mav[LAG] · · Score: 4, Informative

    Doesn't let you even look at the source code.

    No, you'll have to download it yourself and fire up your favourite text editor to do that.

    --
    --- Hot Shot City is particularly good.