Slashdot Mirror
Why Russian Space Images Look Different From NASA's
An anonymous reader writes "The Russians have published two amazing photos of Earth using their new Elektro-L satellite, in 30,000km high orbit around the equator. The quality is stunning, and they look quite different from NASA's Earth images. But why are they different? And are they better than NASA's?"
Is it just me or is the gizmodo link borked?
Me > Russian space program in terms of Mbits per second. Awesome.
PS: I know that a connection of such a huge distance would grind commercially available speeds to a halt, but don't piss on my parade.
Gawker media should be summarily banned.
For those who don't know why http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/12/2234252/Gawker-Source-Code-and-Databases-Compromised
...image looks different because airbrush removed YOU.
Well, they're in Russian, for one thing.
Nasa ones look better to me. Sand is a sand color, and the areas of shallow water are the turqoise blue/green color that they should be. Russian ones just show a flat dull blue.
Gizmodo redirects any traffic to their localized versions. For example, I'm in Brazil and if I follow the link provided in the summary, they redirect me to http://www.gizmodo.com.br/#!5787176/this-is-the-moon-and-the-earth-like-you-have-never-seen-them-before -- that doesn't exist and goes to the front page of the localized version.
Note that I both my OS and browser are in English. I even made sure that my "preferred language for displaying pages" are only English. I guess they do the redirection based on IP only, and find that quite rude.
Parent should be modded down. Link is NSFW and mentally scarring.
In my experience with remote sensing better looking means nothing. What matters is the what kind of information we're able to extract from images. Like:
http://www.sciencephoto.com/images/download_wm_image.html/E750009-F._colour_Landsat_image_of_a_reservoir_in_Virginia-SPL.jpg?id=697500009
This a useful Landsat image (or composition, actually). It's also very ugly. But it's very useful.
We often had a guy to make a few beautiful images. Do the composition in the GIS software we used normally and our designed retouched it on Photoshop. People often went "wow" when looking at it but it was useless.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
for whatever reason ?
Read radical news here
You're a fucking douchebag. Have you ever heard of GPS? We spend billions of dollars on satellites every year. We're probably the leader in satellite technology and deployment.
http://uk.gizmodo.com/5787176/this-is-the-moon-and-the-earth-like-you-have-never-seen-them-before
The one linked in TFS seemed to take me to the front page with adverts. The above link goes straight to the article.
Terrible article.. what's amazing here is that a whole mess of satellites have been launched to GEO but this is the first time anyone bothered to release photos from the altitude to the public. Isn't it glorious to see the entire Earth in one frame?!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Any website that doesn't let you read content without javascript isn't worth reading.
Oh, gizmodo is horrible. First it took me to the german site, which didn't have the article. Then, after lots of manipulation (click the little 'US' label on the left top), I got to the article, but couldn't figure out how to close the stupid window that covers half of the cool image they're talking about.
But, to the subject: Isn't it fairly obvious why the russian image looks better? Look: compare the NASA image: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=2429 to the russian one: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/images/spacecraft/application/weather/elektro/earth_disk1_1.jpg One obvious difference - in the NASA image, clouds have no shadow, in the russian one they do. That makes the NASA image look flat, and the russian one jump out in 3D. Why that is, I'm not sure.
Some NASA guy just explained that the Russian images are no worse and no better than NASA's images; they're just looking at the earth in different ways. There's no hint of blame anywhere (and indeed, there's nothing to be blamed for).
"the Russian images are not better or worse than their images. They are just different visualizations of reality based on different data sets" and this sums up nearly everything ever.
What are you talking about? Her vagina is totally blurred out.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
I guess you could read the fucking article and not guess
Just look at any of the several Russian photographers works on met-art.com or equivalent.
The Russian photos are made entirely of data from red and infrared sensors. The NASA Blue Marble image is a completely, tragically fake rendering, with visible polygon vertices... but mapped with photos from beautiful RGB sensors.
If you throw the moon + earth image into an image editor and adjust the levels, you'll notice that the moon was moved to make it more .. photogenic. The other image also has some signs of editing ... really is kind of funny.
I'm not a bird, I'm a super-advanced flying stealth dinosaur!
The russian photos in question combine infra-red with visible wavelengths. They are not better, just different.
+1 concise
These clowns can't produce reliable URLs. Don't reward them with links.
The image.
May have something to do with color perception. Just sayin'...
wow there's really nothing left of the aral sea?
Have gnu, will travel.
picture takes YOU!
Curses! You tricked me into visiting Gizmodo. I will tolerate no more of your cretinous games!
in russia we mock our own phony religions. so we don't cry, just like you. relska
These images look nice, interesting angles. They probably look slick because they've been post resized sharpened, the smaller versions on Gizmodo have been gently sharpened to make them pop a bit, it's a common photographic trick.
Even if you have a sharp 12-24 megapixel image, it can always use some sharpening when it's downsized for the web. If you don't sharpen after downsizing, photographs still look great but not as crisp as they could.
(And yes, if you sharpen the full size image and then downsize, the downsizing obliterates the sharpening done at full size.)
Damn, I already moderated this topic. Now I'll have to log in with my sock puppet to comment.
a model.
Sig this!
Failmodo lives up to its name, as usual.
Ummm... but that doesn't mean that the US images are any better or worse than the russian images.
Take, for example, what appears to be a Cal Tech prank that seems to have made it into NASA's photo-of-the-day, back when CASSINI was sending pics of Titan.
http://csma31.csm.jmu.edu/physics/rudmin/titan/titan.htm
Now, the author may be right -- it wouldn't seem that Titan could have an atmospheric-style plume, with strong wind shears at 10000 feet, now, would it? But right or wrong, my point will still hold.
Point being, that unless you are somebody who knows what they are looking at, all the photos are simply a pretty picture, nothing more.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The Russian images are using the metric system. Of course they are going to look different!
"the Russian images are not better or worse than their images. They are just different visualizations of reality based on different data sets"
and this sums up nearly everything ever.
In post-Soviet Russia, satellite data and image visualizes you.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Beauty is subjective, but the Russian version seems to have 3 key things going for it:
1. It's taken with the sun at the side instead of behind the craft, making for deeper cloud shadows.
2. The NASA image was probably taken through different color/wavelength filters (as described in TFA) and the clouds and/or the craft move a bit between filter changes, blurring the clouds in the re-combined images. The Russian one used a camera that works more like commercial cameras: different sub-pixels for different colors sampled at the same time rather than filtering one color at a time.
3. Because the Russians use a near-infrared wavelength in place of a visible-length color (also described in the TFA), the result has a reddish tint because of the way vegetation reflects light. Red and orange tint tends to appear sharper and brighter to most people than green, giving the images a subjectively sharper look. TFA didn't mention this sharpness affect, but as an amateur artist, I have noticed it.
Table-ized A.I.
Russian pictures are METRIC ours are not.
Gawker media should be summarily banned.
For those who don't know why http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/12/2234252/Gawker-Source-Code-and-Databases-Compromised
The exact same thing happened to Slashdot some years back. Database stolen, and it turned out Slashcode was storing user passwords cleartext at the time.
And you owe me a new irony meter.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Of course it would look different. The Russian image is actually taken in space, unlike the NASA one which was filmed in a sound stage.
Of course there is blame!
They pretend to show the Earth is round and lookit the Moon, round is too!
Nah, they just want to discredit God-fearing Americans who know the Earth is flat(*) because the Good Book says it so!
(*) I don't know that the Bible says the Earth is flat or not, but having been used to prove just about anything, I might as well postulate that it says it is flat.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
This (Gizmodo) web site is broken. There is a giant frame in the middle of the page that does not go away. Looks like javascript is required . . . lame.
As pointed out previously, the images are 3d renderings, note the fake blue atmospheric haze in the visibleearth image above... In regards to the nasa image , the photo that is mapped on the sphere looks like the blue marble image(it's a 15year? old image), a mosaic composed of many small satellite photos from multiple passes(removing clouds) of the land masses, them edited to make the lighting, color(satellite image are rarely in visible wavelengths) and angles match. Also worth noting is that the sea, is hand done, and if you get down to the pixel level, some of the sea-land edges are a bit rough where there is shallow water included in the satellite image. And its an old school style rendering, possibly even straight from world wind... So no depth mapping or tessellation to the cloud layer, so no shadows or sophisticated rendering of light simulation...
The Russian one, looks more like "hole earth plates", especially the cloud layer, also adding a defuse, specular and depth map layer also helps to add realism to the image.
Nasa, Hollywood or I, could produce a more realistic/convincing image, even from the same data set; In regards to the original premise; perception is in the eye of the beholder, and production is defined by the audience.
The Russian satellite also captures slight different wavelengths. Even if they had the same views, it would look different.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Fixed link: http://us.gizmodo.com/#!5787176/this-is-the-moon-and-the-earth-like-you-have-never-seen-them-before
The reason it's broken is that they redirect you to your country's/mobile platform's special web site when you omit the "us.". If you're in the US and using a desktop web browser you wouldn't notice.
I love how the author is an obvious Star Wars fan. But nonestly, I'd put "technological terror they'd constructed". There, fixed. :)
...with a lot of facts but no explanation.
The Russian images look more realistic because of the sense of perspective induced by the reflection of the sun of the globe. The Russian color schemes also look more alien, which catches your eye a bit more than the NASA (regular) color scheme, which we are used to seeing.
That is why near IR images of earth objects are so intriguing as well. It's a picture of an everyday object, but it just looks different!
They look different probably because Russia have pictures of the other side of the earth, you know, outside of USA.
Pro Coffee Drinker
...why in three fuck's name doesn't our trusty editor check even that?
With "real" I mean images with colors like a human would see from above there. Or at least like pictures taken with a good DSLR camera.
I really like to view the beautiful images they generate from data like the one Hubble delivers, but I am also interested in seeing how the things in space would look to a human eye.
Sites that rely on javascript for basic features like displaying a page are broken. Plain and simple.
Even on slashdot, they're only 75% of the way to making the comments system unusable for those without scripting (d2 being unusable from the outset).
http://gizmodo.co.uk/5787176/this-is-the-moon-and-the-earth-like-you-have-never-seen-them-before
The "Vivid" and "Photo" modes littering printers and monitors have as much relevance to Realism as McDonald sugar buns have to Bread. Fujifilm vs Kodak wasn't about quality, it was about hyperrealism. Digital just makes it all the worse.
The earth is actually quite flat. Russia hires different artists to create their space "photography" than NASA. It's a conspiracy to keep us from realizing that the earth is really the center of the universe and that all of the objects in space move around us.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Same thing here. That's annoying.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Obviously a huge Photoshop fail, this image highlights possible stamp tool locations https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Iv5FJWlGM-5OVSKJ7yWupw?feat=directlink original: http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/ve/2429/globe_west_2048.jpg
I wish all these fuckin' fuckers would just all lock themselves behind a paywall ghetto AND googlebot would ignore them. The goddamned web was designed for collaboration and the sharing of knowledge, not propping up your outdated business model.
And yes, another datapoint for borked in FF4 unless you let them run javascript on your browser.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Been working in GIS for 10 years. Yeah that's pretty standard.
Two sets of data:
1) That you use to do actual work and analysis on. It isn't pretty.
2) That you use for presentations, that is heavily edited, photo shopped/illustrator, and very pretty.
Managers and public don't want to see the stuff you do actual work on, as its fuglie as hell. They want pretty pictures they can go ohhh and ahhhh at.
Then of course they want all sorts of unreasonable requests based on that not knowing how many hours went into fudging it to make it look that way...
Can't say in this specific example, but its pretty common practice.
Anyway when doing analysis people aren't really actually "looking" at the image, rather looking at pixel values and applying computer algorithms to gather information, meaning, and to provide data for decision making processes. Different sats use different wavelengths, and have various resolutions, as well to consider, and much of the color is false color applied afterwords. Anyway its been awhile since I did much raster work, but such is what I remember.
Let me sum up the article, minus the propaganda: Russia has launched a new satellite that takes infrared pictures of earth. The Russian space agency is using those to produce false color images. They look really cool, and it is a big success.
Unfortunately, the tone of the article is "OMG! Did the Russians do something better than us Americans! It cannot be! But don't worry citizens: the American government can explain it away! Their camera is really only as good as our cameras, but they are post-processing the images to look like they are better! Go red white and blue!"
It makes me think of the Butter Battle Book, by Dr. Seuss. We don't need another cold war, so please I hope they tone down the rhetoric.
What looks 'better' varies by person, but in general anything goes when making an image beautiful to the eye. The Russians are using more infrared bands than most NASA images do, and their images have a lower sun angle. Both of these bring out details in the imagery.
If you want to see more images taken in infrared bands, take a look at the Earth as Art exhibit hosted by the USGS. (NASA is credited on some of them because it was involved with the satellites. And for full disclosure, I should mention that I personally created many of the images in the EaA exhibits.) We chose and created these pictures for aesthetic quality -- we wanted them to look good rather than be useful for science. But there are no photoshop tricks. Some of them are just using wavelengths of light that you cannot see with human eyes.
I think the point of this entire press release by the Russians is that they are savvy about public relations, and had enough foresight to distribute images that looked good instead of images with immediate scientific value. Not every government agency adopts that strategy -- we often try to wow the scientists first and the public later.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Obviously the difference is caused by the Russian imps using pencils to paint while the Americans use their special million-dollar pens that work without gravity.
I stopped visiting Gizmodo long ago, and now actively try to avoid it. The quality of reporting is almost zero, with their sole existence based on getting the most page views possible (profit), traditional journalistic standards are irrelevant.
Everyone knows we've never really been to space. The reason these two countries produce such different versions of space images is because neither has actually been there! So of course they came up with two totally different looks. I don't know how much more evidence you need to see the truth.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2061048&cid=35681060
(Hairyfeet's SUCH a dumbass, he doesn't know the diff. between STATICALLY ADDRESS IP BASED banners & DYNAMICALLY ADDRESSED ONES using host/domain names!)
LOL, I mean, ok - listen to his b.s. ALL YOU WANT, but only AFTER you read the URL from this website above, lol!
(He sure is a "big talker" though, isn't he? Ripping others' work but he can't show he's done better... & he CERTAINLY SHOWED he is a fuckup in his "tech know-how" above!)
Another instance of his "big talking b.s." is here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2029850&cid=35450222
He says "automating McDonalds would be 'easy'" but he's NEVER DONE THAT... I have (one of the programmers for them, Boston Market, & Burger King's "bump bar" system).
APK
P.S.=> Just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2EZ'", but then again? "Pwuffesuh HaiwyPheet" is only an "ITT Tech Boy" techie... lol! apk
Stupid localization. That's why it takes me to gizmodo.jp, to the front page there, with no indication of Russian photos of the earth. And more ads than I am willing to sort through.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2062904&cid=35684474
Nuff said, & THAT? That was just "too, Too, TOO EASY - just '2EZ'"
APK