View the Moon in 3D on Your Desktop

TheBeansprout writes "You can now view the moon in 3D With NASA World Wind with two sets of Clementine data and full placenames. "We have just digested the best of the images, so we can now deliver the moon at 66 feet (20 meters) of resolution" says Patrick Hogan, World Wind project manager at NASA Ames. "This is a first. No one has ever explored our moon in the 3-D interactive environment that World Wind creates," he adds. Download World Wind and view the quick tutorial or tour to interact, and there's some moon screenshots available too. A linux version of World Wind is slated for early 2006."

Comments

Re:In the mean time...

[Bungopolis]

Celestia is a "universe" explorer, and it's very good at its job. WorldWind is a "world" explorer, and it's very good at its job.

WorldWind has two primary advantages over Celestia for exploring the Moon:

* Streamed imagery - data is downloaded as you view, which makes it possible to support extremely high resolution and detailed data that, if downloaded all at once (as would have to be the case with Celestia), would span hundreds of gigabytes.

* Topographic projection - WorldWind supports topographic data for both the Earth and the Moon. This means that if you can see craters and mountains in 3D, which is what really sets it apart from viewing a flat image. Even viewing a flat image projected onto a simple sphere (as in Celestia) is not much more enlightening than viewing a flat photograph of the sphere itself.

Linux and Mac Versions

[kf6auf]

According to the Wiki FAQ anyone is encouraged to work on the port of the current version with some resources they have made available and the next version (January 2006) should be cross-platform.

Re:Linux and Mac Versions

[TheBeansprout]

Quite correct. The thing with World Wind is that it's community-driven, so if people want ports then they need to step up and join in. In addition to your links there's also a forum section for ports and a how to get involved page on the Wiki. We welcome all the help we can get - I came to WW from the Slashdotting 12 months ago, so let's see what this time can bring :)

data data data only 22 CDROMs

[rednuhter]

the 22 CD ROMs from the Clementine project can be accessed from here

http://starbase.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/clem1-l-h-5-d im-mosaic-v1.0/
(jpegs are in the browse directories)

or if you have not the got the bandwidth they are only 220 USD from

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cd-rom/web_store.cgi?ca tegory=hires

now if only I could find a the above as a DVD torrent, hmmm

Yeah but...

[kf6auf]

When you zoom in all the way, is it made of cheese?

Try it.

Wheeee & WW2D

[TheBeansprout]

A goatse image on the Road Map page within 30minutes of the Slashdotting. You're getting slow dudes :p

I didn't mention in the article, but there is a partial clone of World Wind for Linux done by a community member.See the thread here for more info.

People can also join #worldwind on irc.freenode.net. That's probably the best way to get involved with developing and find out what's where.

And lastly...yes, Mars is on the way. Stay tuned.

Re:20m resolution and the landing sites...

[NeoThermic]

>I guess this means we still won't be able to see the landing sites in enough detail?

Correct. The largest object that is on the moon is the 14036kg SIVB from Apollo 15. Located at 1.51S 17.48W (or as a WWURI: worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=-1.51&lon=-17.48&a lt=13402 ), it isn't actually visible, possibly because that is its impact place, rather than a resting place (so it could well be smashed).

The largest intact objects is the Lunar Rovers, and there's three of them ( Apollo 15's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=26.08&lon=3.66&al t=13402), Apollo 16's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=-8.97&lon=-15.51& alt=13402) and Apollo 17's rover (worldwind://goto/world=Moon&lat=20.17&lon=-30.77& alt=13402), however at about 2 meters in length, on a 20m/pixel basis they are a 10th of a pixel.

So in short, if you're looking for 'evidence', you'll be waiting for higher-res images :)

NeoThermic

P.S. Sorry for the non-clickable URL's, but slashdot strips out the usefull characters, so WWURI's end up as: worldwind:gotoworldMoonlat-151lon-1748alt13402, which is useless

Re:20m resolution and the landing sites...

[MikeyToo]

The largest intact objects left on the moon after the landings were not the LRVs but the descent stages for the LMs, one from each of the six successful landings. These are about 4 meters across. Other unintact items from the landings were the ascent stages of the LMs which were intentionally crashed into the moon to provide seismic data.

http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/fieldguide/pages/aain dex/home1.html has impact point data for the ascent stages.

Re:20m resolution and the landing sites...

[MikeyToo]

Perhaps it's because they were mostly empty space. After the LM was pulled from the SLA and the Apollo spacecraft was a safe distance away, the S-IVB was slowed by 115 FPS by dumping propellants through the engine, then all the tanks are vented to safe the stage. When it impacted it was just a lot of aluminum sheeting.

DUPE!

[zippthorne]

I've read this before. Mr. plagiarizing karma farmer.

In fact, a google search for some key text reveals two postings to slashdot alone. http://www.google.com/search?q=he%20may%20as%20wel l%20have%20said%20%22We%20choose%20to%20go%20to%20 the%20weather%20balloon.%22%20

Re:The "Moon" is a ridiculous liberal myth.

[Shaper_pmp]

That little "Phhhhhhhhhwfffft" sound you just heard? It was the joke flying about three miles over your head.

HTH. ;-)

Re:20 METERS?

[Idarubicin]

But now we have been taken over by THE FRIGGIN' MOON! The data of that desolate celestial body is more accurate than the data of the Netherlands.

For what it's worth, the Moon has a surface area of a bit less than forty million square kilometers. The Earth has a surface area of more than five hundred million square kilometers. The Moon's a way easier job. If it makes you feel better, the resolution of the Netherlands (er, images thereof...) is proportionately quite a bit better than the Moon data.

...And yes, I know that there are other reasons for the limited availability of the Netherlands imagery.

check out moon.google.com

[eyegor]

Google is hosting a nice site called moon.google.com that's similar to google maps. You can actually zoom in close and see detailed views of the moons construction.

Highly recommended