NASA Releases New High-Definition Image of Earth 106
New submitter klchoward writes "Working for NOAA, I have been really pleased to see the weather data from the new Suomi NPP satellite coming into our computer models already but have been blown away by its capability to take stunning high-definition images of our planet. See the article at Huffington Post or go straight to the image at NASA's website." Reader derekmead has some images from further afield, too: these beautiful images of Mars come from NASA's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Heyt! (Score:5, Funny)
I can see my house!
What a miserable looking mud ball (Score:3)
Re:What a miserable looking mud ball (Score:5, Funny)
If you don't like it, go someplace else.
Re: (Score:1)
I've heard it's Mostly Harmless though.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
No big loss. After all, its inhabitants concern themselves entirely too much about the movement of green paper, and still think that digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
Copyright Infringement! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Did they get it from Megaupload? Someone tell Chris Dodd...
Re: (Score:2)
Which reminds me of this article [theonion.com]
Link to original size pic. (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/618486main_earth_full.jpg
Re:Link to original size pic. (Score:4, Interesting)
As wallpaper, the press shot can hardly be beat. If they have the GeoTIFFs somewhere, though, that would have much broader application...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Original data sets suitable for conversion to texture maps are available. Start with these links:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_cat.php?categoryID=1484
Re: (Score:2)
if you're upset about only seeing north america, you'll be more upset when you see the crud in the gulf of mexico clearly visible.
Re: (Score:3)
NASA readily admits that this is a composite image, but perhaps mentioning that it's a composite of land-pass images stitched together on a 3D sphere modeled after the Earth would make more sense. People might otherwise just assume this is a composite of photographs taken from and stiched together in 2D.
It does make me wonder why the
Re:Link to original size pic. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure I'm following where you're leading. This is a composite; it's a composite of Earth-view swaths of a sun-synchronous polar orbiting earth observation satellite. The "native geolocation space" of the images is a swath approximately 3000 km wide and tracking under the orbital path of the spacecraft (i.e., ground-track Mercator). This image is based on reprojecting those swaths to the geoid, so it looks like you're floating above the Equator and looking down at Earth.
As to anti-aliasing, I dunno. This isn't a standard product of Suomi's ground system, so whatever aesthetic and technical decisions are reflected in this image are entirely on the NASA folks who did this.
Re: (Score:1)
... so it looks like you're floating above the Equator and looking down at Earth.
No, not above the Equator. The North American continent doesn't cross the Equator.
That's our home... (Score:3, Insightful)
We have to love it since we can't leave it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not with that attitude.
Go Suomi ! (Score:2)
Great picture
Too Large (Score:2, Insightful)
The North American continent is too large. Or the Earth is too small.
It is very bothersome, and creates the illusion that the USA is much larger than it is!
Re: (Score:2)
There's a lot of distortion in the image. The probe is only 500 miles above the Earth, so the probe can only see about 1700 miles in each direction before it reaches the horizon. They've basically presented the image as seen through a fish-eye lens.
Re:Too Large (Score:4, Informative)
Actually on further inspection it seems that this was electronically generated from sweeps of the Earth, and therefore they could've chosen any perspective they wanted, but the horizon distance in the image is correct for someone looking from 500 miles above that spot.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, your guess as to the altitude is pretty good.
From http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/media/newsletter/winter09/nppsatellite.pdf [wisc.edu]:
825 km is 512 miles.
So, the nadir point (center) of the image is largely distortion-free and scales closely to the geometry of the original instrument swath. As you get farther away fro
Re: (Score:1)
Projection: Near-sided perspective from 2124 kilometers above 20 North by 100 West
Re: (Score:2)
I was hoping for a pic of the other side, where the interesting stuff is. It looks like they haven't bothered.
In next episode of CSI:whatever (Score:4, Funny)
Looks like it is photoshopped. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The mods have spoken - he succeeded at funny.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, "Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile." I spent last summer folding it. I also have a full-size map of the world. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, "E6". -- Stephen Wright
What we need... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
It has the opposite effect (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
...is for every politician and corporate bigwig to have an image like this permanently tattooed onto their retina.
Nah; that image would mostly impress American politicians with the "fact" that the only continent visible from space is North America. South America, Africa and Eurasia simply don't exist, or are too insignificant to include on a picture of the Earth. For that matter, Canada doesn't seem to exist, either.
Yeah, yeah, I know; it's what was visible from one point 500 miles (800 km) up from just one point on the satellite's orbit. But we have a lot of replies already that seem to be pushing the idea that
Re: (Score:1)
Projection: Near-sided perspective from 2124 kilometers above 20 North by 100 West
Re: (Score:2)
500 miles (800 km)? I think it's higher. From the image file's metadata:
Projection: Near-sided perspective from 2124 kilometers above 20 North by 100 West
I think you're right. I was just using the estimates from other posters in this discussion. But I'd guess that the NASA folks just might be more accurate than random /. posters. ;-)
In any case, when I saw the image, I was immediately struck by the fact that it was obviously the view from a point rather close to the Earth. It has only about half of North America plus all of Central America, but no South America. It's not even close to a hemisphere.
The funny part, of course, was the people who took t
Re:Where is all the "green"? (Score:4, Informative)
The picture was taken a few weeks ago. The high-latitude and high-altitude parts of North America aren't very verdant this time of year.
My 1/2 gig PC cried (Score:2)
It didn't have enough room to display the 8000x8000 image and froze.
May be time for an upgrade.
Re: (Score:2)
1/2 gig of what?
Re: (Score:3)
gig 1 |gig| noun
1 chiefly a light two-wheeled carriage pulled by one horse.
2 a light, fast, narrow boat adapted for rowing or sailing.
I too would like to know if it is half a boat or half a carriage.
Re: (Score:2)
I too would like to know if it is half man, half a boat or half a carriage.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not a system memory issue, I'm pretty sure, I think. My 4GB RHEL 6.2 laptop's GNOME session crashed while Firefox tried to load the image.
I wouldn't be surprise if it were partly due to my ancient Firefox (3.6.24), but crashing GNOME isn't Firefox's fault.
Admit it... (Score:5, Funny)
How many of you had the urge to zoom in with your mouse wheel?
Just USA seen from space. Not whole Earth. (Score:3, Insightful)
I much prefer this one about Apollo-1 crew:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2160.html [nasa.gov]
Very nice shot. Reminds also how difficult and dangerous was the space race.
Wow! Who knew? (Score:3)
It's not a photograph (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty, but it's not a photograph of the earth. It's CG; a rendering of a sphere texturemapped with images of the surface of the planet that they captured. Neither NASA nor huffpost are misrepresenting what it is, but there's something special about the original blue marble, which is an actual *photograph* of the entire planet, not something thrown together in 3ds max.
Re:It's not a photograph (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a little sad that the last time any human was able to see the entire earth at once was December 1972. That's like traveling across the ocean and then coming home and sitting on your front porch for the next 30 years.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Even if you are in high orbit you can only see at most half of the planet at a time.
When you look at a tennis ball, do you remind yourself that you're only seeing half of it?
Re: (Score:1)
Even if you are in high orbit you can only see at most half of the planet at a time.
When you look at a tennis ball, do you remind yourself that you're only seeing half of it?
Often, yes. Is that just me?
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you are in high orbit you can only see at most half of the planet at a time.
When you look at a tennis ball, do you remind yourself that you're only seeing half of it?
Often, yes. Is that just me?
You are not alone.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That's like traveling across the ocean and then coming home and sitting on your front porch for the next 30 years.
That's just retirement.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm guessing that most of the country is pretty brown in January, excepting the lower latitudes and areas with a lot of evergreens. I suppose it also could be a product of the camera, for instance a lot of IR or something.
Re: (Score:2)
Season change makes a big difference at any height
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, and I thought Australia was dry ... but even it has more green in a sat image than visible in this image.
To be fair, it's winter and most of the US has been cleared of native vegetation and replaced with farmland. Crops have all been harvested so there ain't much there except dead grass (dead because a lot of the continent freezes in winter). Plus it's been a dry winter (not much snow in the north nor rain in the south).
Fractals Fractals Everywhere (Score:2, Interesting)
Suomi :-) (Score:4, Informative)
As a Finn, I'm glad to have "Finland" (in Finnish) up there in orbit :-)
Re:Suomi :-) (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but how many people with the actual surname "Suomi" do you know anyway... :-)
Wallpaper Instructions (Score:1)
Was just looking at the 'Set as Wallpaper' instructions
And people say Mac's are easy to use
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2159.html
makes a good desktop picture (Score:2)
Cloud-Free update? (Score:3)
Where is it? (Score:2)
Can we have southern hemisphere images too? (Score:2)
The orginal 1972 "Blue Marble" showed a beautiful collection of cold front spun up out of antartica. It would be great to get some composite images of the other side the world too.
Oblig. MST3K reference (Score:2)
Just like we left it, with the USA in charge!