Slashdot Mirror
Russian Satellite Takes Most Detailed 121-Megapixel Image of Earth Yet
Diggester writes "The satellite, known as Elektro-L No.1, took an image from its stationary point over 35,000 kilometers above the Indian Ocean. This is the most detailed image of the Earth yet available, capturing the Earth in a single shot with 121-megapixels. NASA satellites use a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together. The detail in the pic is just amazing."
Now all I need is a 2000 inch TV to view it on. I think Weird Al knows where to get one.
NASA satellites use a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together.
The [Russian] satellite [...] took an image [...] capturing the Earth in a single shot with 121-megapixels.
The detail is fascinating but visually it looks terrible because it includes the infrared spectrum. It looks like a dead rock with sick black oceans. Awful.
Also, I looked at the zoomable image and zoomed in all the way in and.... saw mostly macroblocks? Is that still "amazing detail" in a sense that eludes me?
One reason the NASA global-coverage image sets that were released in 2002 (with updates starting in 2005) have become the de-facto standard source is that: 1) anyone can download them; and 2) they're in the public domain, so anyone can use them for any purpose. You can get a bunch of versions here and from the Visible Earth site linked at the bottom of that page.
This one looks cool, but further use will be limited if the only thing I can do with it is look at it in this online zooming browser.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It looks photoshopped because it includes false color data from an infrared cam. It's not photoshopped.
This is actually a pic of the anti-Earth in a parallel universe. This Earth is clearly wearing a goatee.
It still only has a resolution of 1KM per pixel and the chromatic aberration is terrible.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
Clearly they bought that camera because it has "the most megapixels"
Well, you'd be right if North was actually up. However, it's settled science that West is actually up given that the sun and planets rotate top to bottom down the solar system's vertical plane.
The "Blue Marble" image you're pointing at is based on EOS (Terra/Aqua) imagery. The most recent NASA Blue Marble (Blue Marble 2012) is a composite based on the new NPP Suomi spacecraft, with approximately a 1-km pixel resolution.
As to "accurate"... I think the Blue Marble images (based on the visible-light band sensors of their respective spacecraft) are closer to what a naked eye in orbit would perceive than the Russian imagery, which seems to include false-color infrared. But "naked eye in orbit" is scientifically less useful than the multi-spectral IR and visible all of these spacecraft can sense.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The one thing that does bother me is the chromatic aberration - especially at higher magnifications, the overlap between the colors is very jarring.
I rather doubt the CA filters in Photoshop could handle this problem, but it would give you a more esthetic result.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The Russian method, as linked in the article, is one large picture. It's actually a composite of different wavelengths, which is really cool. The rust effect is from the IR reflection of vegetation.
When NASA does it, as in the pictures that aren't this one, they stitch together a composite.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
As a russian, I would like to take this opportunity to insolently question whether NASA still has any satellites at all, with all the funding cuts and everything.
I really dislike the 2012 Blue Marble, due to the very visible stripes where it's been quilted. It may have far more pixels, but I think the original 1972 Apollo 17 image is far more visually impressive.
But to me, nothing so far beats this 43 year old photo.
That's my home, there!
All this time, I thought the Russians just used a pencil.
The detail in the pic is just amazing.
And they still can't find Carmen Sandiego.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
As another russian, I find that funny.
We do. They work.
121 megapixels -- can any of the photo aficionados tell us how that compares with the shots of earth taken with the film cameras aboard the Apollo spacecraft? Some of those were mighty good.
Thank you for Sputnik and Vostok.
You put the U.S. into such a panic about falling behind in science and technology that they funded my science education.
I couldn't have done it today. No more free tax-funded education. We have to go out and buy our education the free market. No more free tuition at City College. You have to be rich to study engineering in America now.
Both versions are stitched together. The Russian version stitches 121 million images with less temporal resolution.
As neither Russian nor American I find it both funny and unfunny at the same time.
Yours,
Shroedinger the Cat.
This is the original image. You're free to do as many lossy operations on it as your heart desires.
Our current series of geostationary weather satellites operated by NOAA have been taking images at 1 km resolution for the visible band and 4 km for four IR bands since 1995. The primary difference with Elektro is that it has more bands, two visible bands at 1 km and 8 IR bands at 4 km (which is why it looks blocky when you zoom in). A description of that imager can be found here: http://database.eohandbook.com/database/instrumentsummary.aspx?instrumentID=784 The image referenced in the article is a false color composite, which has been a common product from weather satellites (geostationary and otherwise) since we started using them decades ago. It shows vegetation more than we have seen from GOES because it has a near-IR band. GOES typically takes "full disk" images every three hours. The US has a new platform going up in 2016 with 16 bands - visible bands are 0.5 km and IR are at 1 km. That sensor will not be able to do true color (some of us fought hard for that...) but it can be simulated to an extent (the sensor will have red and blue wavelength sensing abilities, with a near-IR band allowing use of a look-up table to generate green; the surface under thin clouds, around coastal areas, and some other cases don't look quite right). Japan has bought the same sensor from the same vendor but swapped out a band and replaced it with green, so they will have true color images at roughly 22,000x22,000 pixels in the 2014-2015 time frame. This new sensor can take "full disk" images every 15 minutes (that is the scan schedule set for the US, it could go faster than that). The US took true color images from a geostationary camera on ATS-3 in the late 1960s. As far as I know no one has taken true color images from the geostationary orbit since. I haven't looked closely at Elektro data but the loop I've seen indicates light leaking into the telescope as the sun starts to light the Earth in the east (ie sunrise) - it looks like a lens flare. Many weather satellites have issues like this to some extent, but in this case it was more pronounced than I've usually seen it.
The rust is annoying though... Because they're compressing 4 wavelengths into 3 wavelengths. An image with only the RGB would look nicer. They could store the 4th IR channel as alpha channel...
No matter which way you "look" at something you are either compressing or ignoring some quality of light. The "art" of astrophotography is therefore about how much information you intend to leave out and how much you squeeze into the narrow bands of light we humans can perceive. If you are not happy with the rendering, you might be able to source the uncompressed scientific data -- which will still only ever contain partial-information due to optical, CCD and other limitations -- and render it yourself... Assuming Roskosmos make their equivalent of FITS data available to the public like NASA does.
The Russian people do indeed work, almost to the point of slavery, some may say. But like in most of the world, you don't really see that, you see the rich and uncaring assholes.