Found In Space (On Flickr) 48
Jamie stumbled upon a writeup for all you astronomy and photography buffs out there (Perhaps my Dad or Uncle Jim are reading ;). From the writeup "The 'blind astrometry server' is a program which monitors the Astrometry group on Flickr, looking for new photos of the night sky. It then analyzes each photo, and from the unique star positions shown it figures out what part of the sky was photographed and what interesting planets, galaxies or nebulae are contained within. Not only does the photographer get a high-quality description of what's in their photo, but the main Astrometry.net project gets a new image to add to its storehouse of knowledge." Check out the Astrometry.net site for many cool pictures.
Find any killer asteroids yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time before The Goog aggregates all pictures of the sky in realtime to find killer asteroids & make weather forecasts.
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
May I also posit that it not only keeps the spread of information flowing, but increases both the available information to each of us and the aggregate total information available to mankind.
Small changes like this change how we see life in the long term. Seeing the sky as if it were so many maps of a foreign country brings with it familiarity that raises awareness and new thinking.
This, and projects like it, are awesome. Spell that with capital letters and boatloads of enthusiasm.
Correction (Score:1, Insightful)
Check out the Astrometry.net site for 4 cool pictures.
Am I missing something on the gallery page?
Whoo would have known? (Score:5, Insightful)
When these kinds of services (meaning flicker et al) open up their api to public use there are always some who cant figure out why.
Well folks, this is the reason why.
I betting when the executives at flicker sat down to decide if they were going top open up the api, they had no idea that someone would use it to create a map of the sky.