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Seeing the Earth Almost Live

Posted by samzenpus on from the smile-for-the-satellite dept.

arobic writes "European Space Agency (ESA) is putting recent pictures of the Earth (taken 2 hours before) online using Envisat. To avoid filling up their disks too quickly, only the bmp of the last 30 days are available but jpg are kept. Also, only region receiving light can be seen, which explains why no recent pictures of Thailand are available."

9 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. IE only? by EnderGT · · Score: 4, Informative
    Your results may vary, but I was only able to get it working in IE, not Firefox (1.5.0.8).

    I tried to go see the tornado damage in London, but apparently the resolution is extremely low - at the multinational zoom level, if you will.

  2. Re:Thailand? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I don't get the joke on Thailand.

    Maybe he was referring to the fact that there is/was night in Thailand, so there are no recent pictures, because they need sunlight?

  3. Don't forget MODIS by AnswerIs42 · · Score: 3, Informative
    15 minutes from picture in space to web page (or World Wind if you use it)

    http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/200634 1/

  4. Triana Satalite by GreggBz · · Score: 2, Informative

    Al Gore had an idea to orbit a satellite that provides a continual view of the Earth.

    Shame, I would have like to have seen that publicized and championed by the media. A little cultural enlightenment might have gone a long way.

  5. RAPIDFIRE by mwprod · · Score: 5, Informative

    NASA has been doing this for a long time now.
    Sure RapidFire doesnt have the flashy web interface (actually i dont like the MIRAVI web site), but all the photos are there and up to date.

    http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/

  6. Re:James Kim? by Cauchy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spatial resolution is approximately 300m. 15 spectral bands. Primary use is going to be for things like climate change, land use, etc. Fun to play with if you know what you are doing with it. I've been working in my spare time on code in IDL/ENVI to do imagebasing of aerial imagery so looks like I have a new source of lots of data for testing/playing!

  7. Re:James Kim? by LotsOfPhil · · Score: 3, Informative

    Bad, bad modding.

    In no way is the parent "Funny." James Kim is a reference to the cNET editor who (along with his family) was lost in Oregon and died. Try "Interesting" or "Insightful."

    --
    This post climbed Mt. Washington.
  8. Re:Thailand? by stupidfoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's so last week. Fiji's coup is all the rage now.

  9. Re:Thailand? by arobic · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is no joke on Thailand, except in the mind of the person who actually posted my story. The original word was Scandinavia, basically because it is now always (or almost) dark there and Envisat cannot take pictures, that was all. Now, if somebody can explain to me why my original story was modified, I would like to hear about it.

    --
    Customer: "Do I need a computer to use your software?"