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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."

6 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Thailand? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I don't get the joke on Thailand."

    I read somewhere that the Earth exists in a state commonly referred to as 'round', so sometimes there are parts of the planet that light while others are dark. It's an interesting theory but I cannot claim to be an expert on the topic because I haven't looked out the window to observe this myself.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  2. I can't believe it by steveo777 · · Score: 5, Funny

    We've slashdotted the whole earth!

    --
    This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
  3. 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/

  4. 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!

  5. Anyone know the location of their webserver? by seriesrover · · Score: 5, Funny
    In about half an hour you'll be able to see a flume of smoke rising from the building - it'll be the first time we can physically see a slashdotting in action.


    The suspense is killing me.

  6. 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?"