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Composite Of Earth At Night
Posted by
michael
on Mon Aug 23, 2004 07:23 AM
from the wallpaper dept.
from the wallpaper dept.
crmartin writes "Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is an incredible composite image of Earth from space at night. Actually a composite from many pictures from the Defense Meteorological Satellites Program (DMSP), it's like a skeletal view of the Earth in tiny lights. If you really like it, there are hi-res images up to a 40 megabyte TIFF."
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Michael! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Michael! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Michael! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Michael! (Score:4, Informative)
If there were a 40mb tiff would that be a "10x full-res" image?
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Re:Michael! (Score:5, Interesting)
CAUTION: the following link is a 2MB JPEG that expands to an 8Kx4K image .. that would be about 100megabytes as an uncompressed TIFF
(it's here [bcgreen.com]). With only 380MB of RAM on my box, this chokes Mozilla, but loads OK if I save it and open it with gqview..
I have a second image of North America only [bcgreen.com] that's a bit more manageable in size (1024x768),
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hum (Score:5, Insightful)
Scotland is pretty cool (Score:5, Interesting)
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Also kind of cool... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:hum (Score:5, Interesting)
After the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the buddy-buddy relationships with other communist countries were scratched and it turned into "every man for themselves".
North Korea used to have a constant supply of oil and coal and other energy needs from Russia, but this was abruptly terminated when Russia started saying "Er, you gotta pay full price now". The North Koreans had no cash to pay with, and thus began the rapid spiralling decline of all their energy production, transport, manufacturing and most importantly, food production. Food production in particular was a double-edged sword, needing not only oil to harvest and transport food, but also petroleum products and energy to produce fertiliser for use in North Korea's poor soil. With most of the country starving, and most machinery lying idle and rusting, things have been getting exponentially worse. They now have peasants tilling fields by hand, emaciated, underfed, with no chance of anything changing, unless they join the army, where they are emaciated, underfed and using rifles.
With little or nothing to trade with, North Korea has resorted to high-profit, (relatively) low-staffing-requirements industries like missiles, nuclear power and weapons, and (possibly) any other sorts of chemical or bio weapons to fund their dismal little empire.
Thus we now have them in a position where they have nothing to lose, and a little bitter and twisted.
To the US's credit, there were attempts to try and help Pyongyang out of this dead-end situation, by offering assistance in building reactors that were more efficient and would not produce weapons-grade materials. Unfortunatley, the Clinton administration never came good with their promises, and then the Bush administration came into power and... well, you know the rest. With the likes of John "Deputy Dawg" Bolton doing negotiations with them it's a small miracle South Korea or Japan aren't small burning heaps by now. That's if NK actually do have any nukes. Who knows... the entire government is crazy and senile, so it's hard to guess what they are doing or thinking.
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Re:hum (Score:4, Funny)
That's no way to talk about President Bush... oh, hang on...
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Re:hum (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of something that happened to my father a few years back. He was a high school principal and was giving a tour of the school to some board trustees on a Monday morning. They came around the back of the school where someone had sparypainted "Mr. Smith is gay" on the wall over the weekend.
Without missing a beat, my father turned to the delegation and said "See that? They do indeed have respect for me...why else would they paint Mr. Smith??"
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Re:hum (Score:4, Insightful)
which I find amusing, seeing as RIGHT across the DMZ is the flourishing country of South Korea.
Whether or not you meant to imply this, I think its worth emphasizing that it is the actions of the North Korea government that has damned the nation. Perhaps the influence of China and the Soviets wasn't quite NK's fault, the past dozen year or so resulted in the marked improvement of many post-Soviet satellite states. The North Koreans government ill management of agricultural resources, ill management of foreign relations, and their massive expenditure of money on their idle million man army, consuming one third of their GDP in supporting their army and developing weapons.
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Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
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You just seeing this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Alien landing sight... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Alien landing sight... (Score:4, Insightful)
An interesting question. Depends on the goals of the mission, I suspect.
A couple of profiles thrown off the top of my head:
- Make contact with global leaders
Assuming the aliens make judgments in the same way we do, I would go for either Eastern USA, Western Europe or Japan. If an assumption is made of global government, Eastern USA looks better developed so I would aim for there. If the working assumption is continental governments, there seems to be a greater degree of centralisation in Western Europe, so I'd head for either Madrid or Paris, figuring that one of those two is likely to be the European administration centre. Probably Paris, due to its more central location.
- Study the behaviour of the technology possessing inhabitants of this world
I'd head for an area on the edge of a bright patch, but far enough away that I'm likely to be able to go unnoticed. West China, East Russia, and North Africa all look quite appealing, with little to distinguish between them. I'd probably visit all three, on the basis that there might be regional variation in behaviour.
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Heeeyyyy! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Heeeyyyy! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:5, Interesting)
> Why is half of Texas so dim?
Presumably you're setting up for a joke about which half is missing its idiot...
But seriously, I noticed the same think. The whole USA seems to be divided by a line that runs straight north from the most southerly point of Texas. Is that for real, or just an artifact of the image-making process?
Other interesting stuff:
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Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:4, Informative)
Now, taking this into consideration, the photo will yield more information. You can, for instance, quite clearly trace the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway (the narrow strip of lights running through most of Russia). In the US, the Western part was settled (by the Europeans, that is) much later than the Eastern part; as a consequence, the transportation infrastructure is less developed and it really shows (there are probably also differences in the landscape -- a city is more likely to be built in the plains that in the Great Rocky Mountains).
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Re: Heeeyyyy! (Score:5, Funny)
Please stop telling people about the parts of the US west of the Mississippi River. The reason we're here is because they're not.
Thanks.
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McDonald Observatory (Score:4, Informative)
The other reason is that there just ain't that much stuff out in West Texas.
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That's not very new stuff... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh by the way, did you try www.google.com yet?
It's a pretty new site that just opened.
Electricity Bill (Score:3, Funny)
What a waste! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a waste! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:What a waste! (Score:5, Insightful)
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River Nile and east-russian (rail)road (Score:4, Interesting)
The lines going through eastern Russia (most likely not Russia anymore, but I'm not up to date with the current *stans there), are they based on roads or railroads?
Re:River Nile and east-russian (rail)road (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the line matches for a big part with the trans siberian railway. You can also notices how Moskou is the centre of a star, Paris has a bit of the same effect in France (both very centralised governments).
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Re:River Nile and east-russian (rail)road (Score:4, Informative)
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2002? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2002? (Score:5, Informative)
Tm
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new? (Score:4, Informative)
By the way, the XPlanet project (xplanet.sf.net) can use images like this for the night-side rendering of a near-realtime Earth on your desktop.
Scroll (Score:3, Informative)
cool (Score:5, Funny)
Picture of the.. (Score:3, Informative)
Also of interest (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dfd.dlr.de [dfd.dlr.de]
The German Remote Sensing Data Center. DFD
These guys process sat data etc. Some cool pics here.
English link at top.
Go to sat data on left, then gallery.
G/
Repeat, But Lighter (Score:5, Informative)
I was able to buy a poster size version from my campus poster sale last year, I'm a big fan.
north/south korea (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh no... (Score:4, Funny)
Projection (Score:3, Informative)
It seems to make the world seem very small (exaggerates the UK) but doesn't exaggerate Greenland. The sense of a small world may also be due to focusing only on light areas.
The Peters projection [petersmap.com] gives an accurate representation of the sizes of countries.
Africa (Score:4, Insightful)
It's quite sobering, actually. You look at the US and Japan and Western Europe blazing away, and then realise there are people elsewhere who have literally *nothing*, not even something as 'simple' as electric light.
Re:Africa (Score:5, Insightful)
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Pretty old image (Score:3, Informative)
NASA must be cursing slashdot right now for posting a link to the hi-res image download page. Surely, it will multiply like a plague in the next few days, not only will us geeks be leetching this photo, but everything else that we find interesting, in high res.
I prefer the Nasa JPL DFRC (Dryden) Planes pics as opposed to the heavens and the earth at DMSP (what's with Nasa's naming scheme?). All those X-Planes and B-2s and SR-71s in Hi Res.
Go leech some of the most beautiful war machines ever created. Sonic Booms photographed..
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/
Amatuer Astronomers (and Pros) Cringe (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to sound like Smokey the Bear but please Please do your part in help preventing light pollution and save a little extra in your monthly energy costs in the process. Use motion sensors for your outside security lights and timers for walkway lighting. Blinds and curtains to prevent inside lighting from leaking out into the neighborhood.
You'd be suprised how many backyard astronomers there are!!
More info on the problem:
International Dark Sky Association [darksky.org]
Oh Crap ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:again? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Had it on my desktop,... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately you can't see the lights coming on and off... unless you download the source and get coding
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Re:Drive from London to Singapore? (Score:4, Informative)
The "Orient Express" was a luxury train which ran from Paris to Istanbul. What you've identified is the great Trans-Siberian Railway, leading from western Russia all the way to Vladivostok. It was indeed the corridor for Russian settlement in Siberia.
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That's Monster Island, not Tsushima. (Score:4, Funny)
Any idea why this might be?
That isn't actually Tsushima, it's Monster Island. The UN, in cooperation with the Russian government and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, keeps a constant surveillance vigil on the indigenous monsters such as Godzilla, Mothra, and Gamera. (After 1954, nobody's taking any chances). This necessitates a lot of bright light, which is what you're seeing in the pictures.
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