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Finally, Hi-Def Streaming Video of the ISS's View of Earth
An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from ExtremeTech: "After being continuously inhabited for more than 13 years, it is finally possible to log into Ustream and watch the Earth spinning on its axis in glorious HD. This video feed [embedded at ExtremeTech] comes from from four high-definition cameras, delivered by last month's SpaceX CRS-3 resupply mission, that are attached to the outside of the International Space Station. You can open up the Ustream page at any time, and as long as it isn't night time aboard the ISS, you'll be treated to a beautiful view of the Earth from around 250 miles (400 km) up."
Thought it was a dupe at first, then remembered that this had been posted already to one of the other sites.
I think I have checked about 20 times with one success. And the quality was not great the one time it was working.
By HD they mean 480p, or atleast that's what the "ustream" maxes at
Just a grey square. So much for the hype.
instead of providing ExtremeTech many pageviews. You can find the uStream link right here.
Veni, Vidi, Velcro!
By HD, they mean looking at nothing but grey?
ISS over China at the moment or perhaps crossing the UK.
When it comes back
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/iss-hdev-payload
So that they can remove any UFOs in real time.
After being continuously inhabited for more than 13 years, it is finally possible to log into Ustream and watch the Earth spinning on its axis in glorious HD.
C'mon, that sentence is red meat for grammar Nazis.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
NASA TV has had something similar for a long time. They have internal views with the IIS crew us on-duty and earth-views when the crew is off-duty.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
Nothing. Earth is gone
OMG we slashdotted the ISS.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I've said it before: Sebastian Anthony is submitting his own articles to Slashdot to get page views. Stop giving this guy ad-revenue money.
On a more realistic note, are there any military or espionage concerns that would motivate censorship of a feed like this? Assuming that's even possible, being the International Space Station after all.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Sorry but no. What you see is the Earth moving past as the ISS is orbiting. The Earth spinning on its axis is actually slowing down the motion.
Is this an example of the vitally important science being done for billions of dollars by test pilots in rubber pants?
I laughed at myself when I realized how meh I was when the video was just grey. "I came here to see live video of Earth from space, can you guys get this working, gah! I'm here now, giving you my precious 10 seconds of attention."
After thinking for a second, I give them some slack. I think we might be getting a little blazé at the technical wonders of today. This live feed "doesn't just happen".
Waiting for you by the bridge
Another server down by slashdot
No, your use or Flash is outdated... and I don't have a Flash plugin installed...
First ever stream that worth watching..... and it's not working.... great.
I think it's just overwhelmed; I was able to get on the first time I tried, bu haven't been able to get the video since.
Nah. The resolution coupled with the extreme distance from the earths surface will not reveal anything of importance.
480p max. Seriously?
I could provide a content free stream at a lot higher resolution than this from my webcam.
Considering that the ISS does an orbit around the earth every 90 minutes, compared to the earth rotation every 24 hours, almost 95% of the motion you see is due to the ISS' orbiting the earth rather than the earth spinning on its axis.
"After being continuously inhabited for more than 13 years, it is finally possible to log into Ustream and watch the Earth spinning on its axis in glorious HD."
The Earth has been continuously inhabited for considerably more than 13 years.
(Captcha: Dozens)
Seriously, NASA should do more of this. I think a high def webcam, planted on the moon with a nice lunar peak or two in the foreground with Earth positioned above the peaks, zoomed so Earth fills about 1/4 of the frame would be a mission worth doing. Live feed of 16 megapixel images updated every couple of minutes would be awesome. Then we could also learn how long it takes before lunar dust completely hoses up a lens.
And, for the grey square haters out there, are you too new to remember the Slashdot effect, or too short attention spanned to read the bit on the website about the feed only working when the ISS is in daylight?
Given the bandwidth the video must be coming down through TDRS via Ku band. It would be really nice if they just posted a count-down to the next Ku pass so people would know when that wonderfully not useful grey block was going to turn into a real live video feed.
http://www.xkcd.com/865
...but the oh-so-fun to say - and best grammar-based double-entendre going - it's a dangling participle.
And even worse than just leeching pageviews, ExtremeTech is also running fifteen (15) trackers.
It's one of the most viewer-abusive sites in existence.
Uh. You're not watching the Earth spinning on its axis. You're watching the view from the ISS as it orbits the Earth... In order to watch the Earth spin on its axis, you need to be outside of Earth's orbit... or at least a higher altitude than geosynchronous orbit.
It would be nice to have a truly high-res image, at a lower frame rate (say one frame every few minutes), and use it for a live desktop wallpaper...
Why has it taken this long to re-render it in HD? Blender could have done this years ago.
It toke 13 years from them to render a earth and ISS in HD 3D model....
Why is it shut down during their 'nighttime'? Is it because noone is around to censor the video quickly when needed?
extremetech is the kind of website that requires you to allow such an enormous crapload of all-interconnected javascript, that re-iterates every time you 'temporarily allow all this page', that I can't watch it.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
What's the point of HD if it needs flash.
Scientists, who own this project, will not let us see Earth in HD in real time. They are interested in publishing papers, getting Nobel and other prizes, i.e. keeping data to themselves.
This stream video link does not work as expected. And will not work.
How can it be necessary to run scripts from so many sites? And if you allow the ones on extremetech to run, it runs even more third-party scripts. Short of serving up obvious malware, this is about as hostile and risky as a webpage gets.
What do they mean about it being inhabited for only 13 years--the Earth has been inhabited for a lot longer than that. Is this some kind of Even-Younger-Earth-Creationist nonsense in response to Last Thursdayism?
The link didn't work for me either, but I caught a great shot of a 'moon' in the ads below. Catch it quick before take take 'er down!
NEE-01 PEGASO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... live streamed 720p video early May 2013 through EarthCam http://www.earthcam.com/world/...
Is this the http://www.urthecast.com/ feed? Or a different camera altogether?
See also:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/05/03/2025224/opting-out-of-big-data-snooping-harder-than-it-looks
Amazingly enough, Slashdot does not allow users to delete their accounts.
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paranoia. Analytics and inferential knowledgebase-driven tracking is what
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their infancy -- data collected today is likely to yield far more
information when mined 5 or 10 years from now, when increased data-storage
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current technology. DNA computing, anyone?.
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Amazingly, Slashdot refuses to provide basic posting-deletion functionality.
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Jeez, can't we even get kissed when we get fucked?
So what can a helpless Slashdot user do? Well, to start, I'll be continuing
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message, there's no redo.
Shame on you, Slashdot! I could understand seeing these kinds of policies on
a Duck Dynasty fan-club forum, but you guys are supposed to have a clue.
I agree that the resolution is not exceptional. But the distance is not extreme: the ISS is only in LEO. Actually, it's the availability of real-time streaming that I assumed would cause the greatest concern, if there is any.
I posed the question because I am aware of other situations where cameras in earth-orbit (pointing towards or away from the Earth) have raised concerns from government agencies.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
From a fair challenge like a chickenshit blowhard http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
From a fair challenge like a chickenshit blowhard http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
The page says it shows just black when the ISS is over the night side. Arent the cameras sensitive enough to pick up all that light pollution we produce?