Seeing the Earth Almost Live

arobic writes "European Space Agency (ESA) is putting recent pictures of the Earth (taken 2 hours before) online using Envisat. To avoid filling up their disks too quickly, only the bmp of the last 30 days are available but jpg are kept. Also, only region receiving light can be seen, which explains why no recent pictures of Thailand are available."

Thailand?

[Van Cutter Romney]

I don't get the joke on Thailand.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get the joke on Thailand.

Maybe he was referring to the fact that there is/was night in Thailand, so there are no recent pictures, because they need sunlight?

Re:Thailand?

[drig]

Maybe that's why one night in Bangkok can make a hard man humble?

Re:

[ahillen]

They keep 30 days of pictures right? My guess is Thailand doesn't usually experience night for quite that long at a time.

Since the specialty of this site is not that they show pictures of the earth, but rather that the pictures are ~2 hours old when they are published (according to the submitter), I guess the use of the term "no recent pictures" rather refers to hours than to days.

Re:Thailand?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"I don't get the joke on Thailand."

I read somewhere that the Earth exists in a state commonly referred to as 'round', so sometimes there are parts of the planet that light while others are dark. It's an interesting theory but I cannot claim to be an expert on the topic because I haven't looked out the window to observe this myself.

Re:

[Chris Pimlott]

Yes, but why single out Thailand here?

Re:

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I believe he was asking for us to explain why that particular country was picked as an example, rather than someplace where something interesting is happening, like Iraq.

Re:Thailand?

[stupidfoo]

That's so last week. Fiji's coup is all the rage now [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[LordEd]

I read somewhere that the service keeps their bmp files for a period of 30 days (why, it was the summary! Imagine that.), and jpeg files for longer. I also seem to remember something about the sun usually rising at least once per 30 days in most places in the world (usually more frequently).

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Un, no. Its 'state' is more or less 'spherical'."

It was in public school, cut me a little slack!

Re:Thailand?

[arobic]

There is no joke on Thailand, except in the mind of the person who actually posted my story. The original word was Scandinavia, basically because it is now always (or almost) dark there and Envisat cannot take pictures, that was all. Now, if somebody can explain to me why my original story was modified, I would like to hear about it.

Re:

[Conanymous Award]

A very heavy 'almost'. It never gets completely dark (as in 'night') here even during the winter. But still you probably wouldn't see anything in satellite photos, since it's very, very cloudy here during this time of the year. Hell, I don't remember when I saw proper sunshine the last time. Day in, day out of dull greyness. It isn't even snowing, all we get is water. Oh, sorry for rambling on. But the weather truly sucks here right now.

Re:

[Goaway]

I like how they changed that, but didn't fix your "region" typo.

Way to go, Slashdot editors! Keep Slashdot "real"!

Re:

[cciRRus]

The original word was Scandinavia, basically because it is now always (or almost) dark there and Envisat cannot take pictures, that was all.

Oh, thanks for shedding light on this issue.

Re:

[Lars T.]

Wanna bet he meant the Philippines [bbc.co.uk] (or Vietnam [gulfnews.com], where Typhoon Durian is hitting now)?

Is it possible to zoom enough to...

[Rastignac]

...see naked people ?
(If not, this thing is not useful at all).

Re:

[Clever7Devil]

Wife: Darling, come outside, I want to show you something.
Husband: Not right now darling, I'm trying to see our house on this cool new satellite imaging site.

Two hours later...

Husband: Oh damn it!

Re:

[abandonment]

in firefox, the zoom & move isn't working at all for me?

What's this about Thailand?

[InterruptDescriptorT]

There's no light in Thailand? Have they fallen afoul of the sun or something?

'No light for you! Come back one summer solstice!'

He probably means no light emited from Thailand

[aepervius]

So the satellite receive nothing from them=>Thailand cannot be seen. Or maybe this is a sick joke I do not get at all.

Re:

[Chris Pimlott]

Perhaps he meant 1) no light emitted and 2) confused Thailanad with North Korea. That's the only explanation I can think of.

Re:

[Goaway]

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=210460 &cid=17152156 [slashdot.org]

Thailand

[gEvil (beta)]

Also, only region receiving light can be seen, which explains why no recent pictures of Thailand are available.

Did I miss something? Did some devious Thai overlord deploy a sun-blocking device recently?

Re:

[mrchaotica]

Presumably, it's night there. However, that still doesn't make sense -- why can't we get satellite photos of all the pretty city lights?

Re:

[gEvil (beta)]

Well, considering the summary says that jpgs are available for the last 30 days, then goes on to say there are no "recent" pics for Thailand, it makes you wonder exactly how he's defining "recent."

Night lights

[ProfessionalCookie]

You know that pretty world light pollution picture. That's enhanced. It's not what the typical human eye sees at night time. The lights are much more dim from space. There's not too much to see with the same cameras that take day pictures.

Re:

[ProfessionalCookie]

Here's a link [usra.edu]

Re:

[ProfessionalCookie]

Here's a better link [nasa.gov] that explains "The above image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites. "

Obligatory

[GoombaTroopa]

Did I miss something? Did some devious Thai overlord deploy a sun-blocking device recently?

Mr Burns!

(Probably happened around the time as that episode with the power plant moved to India)

Re:

[edxwelch]

That's just ridiculous.
The reason is quite simple: overuse of solar energy has used up all the sun light in their part of the globe. Parts of Alaska have this same problem during winter.

Re:

[Goaway]

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=210460 &cid=17152156 [slashdot.org]

Figures

[Opportunist]

As usual, we keep aspiring countries in the dark to have access to cheap labour.

le sigh

[Opportunist]

As usual. When I'm trying to be funny, I'm modded troll. When I try to be insightful, it's considered funny.

Maybe I should just troll the shi.. out of everyone, I'm quite sure I get modded insightful in the blink of an eye.

My God..

[OneSmartFellow]

it's full of........., erm, oh, that doesn't work

IE only?

[EnderGT]

Your results may vary, but I was only able to get it working in IE, not Firefox (1.5.0.8).

I tried to go see the tornado damage in London, but apparently the resolution is extremely low - at the multinational zoom level, if you will.

Re:

[Ipeunipig]

No Thailand, No Firefox. What's next, no transfat in my McDonalds?

Re:

[AdamWeeden]

Only if you live in New York City [nyc.gov].

Re:

[Destoo]

Or Canada [wikipedia.org].

Now everyone's burgers taste like dry crap instead of just crap.

Re:

[corky842]

Firefox portable 2.0 w/ Flash 9 works fine.
Click on "Observing the Earth" at the top, then click "Explore Earth in near-real time" on the new page.

Not only Thailand

[loconet]

Not available for Thailand and parts of Soviet Russia, where as we all know, light receives them.

Re:

[ModernGeek]

So you are saying they should show up on the sun?

Re:Not only Thailand - and in Korea

[thewils]

You can only see old people.

I can't believe it

[steveo777]

We've slashdotted the whole earth!

Great.

[RobTFirefly]

The world is a cam whore.

Re:

[Mike89]

The world is a cam whore.

It sure is [myspace.com]

James Kim?

[blankoboy]

Where was this technology when it would have proved so useful? Couldn't this be used to find missing people?

*note: the original link has been slashdotted so I may not be fully aware of what this tech can do (magnification, etc).

Re:James Kim?

[Cauchy]

Spatial resolution is approximately 300m. 15 spectral bands. Primary use is going to be for things like climate change, land use, etc. Fun to play with if you know what you are doing with it. I've been working in my spare time on code in IDL/ENVI to do imagebasing of aerial imagery so looks like I have a new source of lots of data for testing/playing!

that's crap

[r00t]

5 pixels per mile, at least effectively

(I don't know if they magnify that to get something big and blurry)

A typical town will be the size of a small menu icon, or 3 to 4 characters in the default xterm font.

Re:James Kim?

[LotsOfPhil]

Bad, bad modding.

In no way is the parent "Funny." James Kim is a reference to the cNET editor who (along with his family) was lost in Oregon and died. [cnn.com] Try "Interesting" or "Insightful."

Re:

[LWATCDR]

Not to insult the original poster but but I wouldn't call it interesting or insightful. Hopeful or wishful would be better.
These images lack the resolution that one would need to find a person lost in the woods.

It is tragic. It makes me want to get my HAM radio ticket just in case I need to call for help outside of cell phone range.

Don't forget MODIS

[AnswerIs42]

15 minutes from picture in space to web page (or World Wind if you use it)

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/200634 1/ [nasa.gov]

Re:

[iksbob]

Heh. All the images of North America are mysteriously omitted.

Make an awesome desktop widget

[mliu]

Can't quite get through to the site already, but just an idea.

In terms of awesome eye candy this would make just above the coolest desktop widget (for MacOS, Vista, or Yahoo! Widget Engine or whatever). A view of the Earth from space that reflects continuous conditions as they're seen.

You could see it snow outside your window and then 2 hours later you see that your region is now covered in a sheet of white on the map. During the Persian Gulf War I wonder if this had been around if you would have been able to see all the smoke burning oil fields.

Not sure if such a thing would be possible due to technical limitations, but if so I would be the first to run it on my desktop.

Pay service

[xtal]

I'd pay a few bucks a month (maybe more than a few) for a HD feed of the planet in near-realtime.

Any rich geeks want to put up a spy sat? I'm sure I'm not alone.

Re:

[meringuoid]

In terms of awesome eye candy this would make just above the coolest desktop widget (for MacOS, Vista, or Yahoo! Widget Engine or whatever). A view of the Earth from space that reflects continuous conditions as they're seen.

I always thought NASA should mount a camera on the underside of the ISS. A plain old webcam would do, but they could probably lay hands on some pretty decent imaging. They could put it out over a spare cable channel, just put some classical music on the soundtrack and let the world dri

Re:

[hb253]

I bet some smart person will figure out how to use it with xplanet.

Live?

[Klaidas]

Since when is 2 hours delay called "live"?

Re:

[timtwobuck]

Since they prefix it with 'almost'?

Re:

[Klaidas]

Almost would be... say, 1 minute?
It's like saying that e-mail is ALMOST live, even if I'll only reply to your letter tomorrow.

Re:

[Clever7Devil]

Two words:

Wardrobe Malfunction.

"To avoid filling up their disks too quickly"

[bill_mcgonigle]

Suggestion: call Google.

Re:

[adpowers]

Yeah right, Europe hates Google: from the French getting upset about Book Search to the Belgium making them put a huge piece of text on their homepage to the Germans and others who make them censor hate speech.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

Ah, good point. I had on my 'sensible' hat instead of my 'political' hat. Silly me.

Triana Satalite

[GreggBz]

Al Gore [wikipedia.org] had an idea to orbit a satellite that provides a continual view of the Earth.

Shame, I would have like to have seen that publicized and championed by the media. A little cultural enlightenment might have gone a long way.

Re:

[Dr. Eggman]

Wait, you mean to tell me that Al Gore invented the Triana Satalite? This is better than the internet!

To the Press Department!

Re:Triana Satalite

[hey!]

It's a shame. Every time I see Al Gore's name come up, I flinch, waiting for the inevitable "joke" to rear it's brain-dead head.

Don't people ever tire of acting like sheep?

Re:

[Dr. Eggman]

I don't see anything wrong with a little (overused) joking. The problem is when people take the joke's content to be totally serial.

Re:

[DerekLyons]

Al Gore had an idea to orbit a satellite that provides a continual view of the Earth.

Triana would have orbited pretty far out - it's 'continuous view' would have the equivalent of what you would see if you set Google Earth to an eye altitude of 10k miles. (I.E. pretty much 'move along, nothing to see here'.)

Shame, I would have like to have seen that publicized and championed by the media. A little cultural enlightenment might have gone a long way.

The problem with Triana (GoreSat) is that

Re:

[necro2607]

it's supposed to be funny....! ;)

RAPIDFIRE

[mwprod]

NASA has been doing this for a long time now.
Sure RapidFire doesnt have the flashy web interface (actually i dont like the MIRAVI web site), but all the photos are there and up to date.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/ [nasa.gov]

WMD found

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I just spotted WMD in Iraq and North Korea. Quickly, someone get me through to Bush.

OMG...I almost missed that! PONIESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs

Slashdot story with a site hosting BMP's

[dobedobedew]

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:

[Pinkfud]

Yeah, some of those BMP images are huge. No wonder the site is clobbered right now. Quit clicking the BMP links, you fools!

Re:

[hritcu]

Should we tell them [libpng.org]?

Re:

[idonthack]

PNG wouldn't solve anything here, it works better for simple images with lines and large areas of color (vector rasterization, GUI screenshots, etc). Using it on things like pictures just results in a large filesize with a quality no better than JPEG. Their choice of JPEGs with temporarily available BMPs was a good decision.

Re:

[hritcu]

PNG wouldn't solve anything here, it works better for simple images with lines and large areas of color (vector rasterization, GUI screenshots, etc). Using it on things like pictures just results in a large filesize with a quality no better than JPEG. Their choice of JPEGs with temporarily available BMPs was a good decision.

You are wrong. Twice.

First, "PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a bitmap image format that employs lossless data compression [wikipedia.org]", so a PNG is always as good as the original. Absolutely

Re:

[idonthack]

First, "PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a bitmap image format that employs lossless data compression", so a PNG is always as good as the original. Absolutely no information loss, just like zipping the BMP only (usually) at a (slightly) better compression rate. On the other hand JPEG provides lossy compression, so quality inevitably decreases with JPEG (whether you observe it or not).

I know it's lossless. It's just that a JPEG provides quality good enough to be indistinguishable for most purposes from a P

a likely story

[jjeffries]

"Also, only region receiving light can be seen, which explains why no recent pictures of Thailand are available"

Riiiiight... Has anyone ever seen Thailand and Envisat together? Didn't think so! One minute Thailand is right next to you, then you turn around and there's Envisat, but where did Thailand go???

I think any decent person can see what I'm getting at here.

I like the older pictures

[yagu]

I kind of like the older Google satellite pictures better. I got laid off a couple of years ago, but the satellite picture of my bus stop still shows my car parked there so I can still feel like I have a job.

Programmer senses tingling

[Ironsides]

I sense the idea for a project to automatically take these images and update a map of the earth in real time.

And why the hell aren't they using PNG instead of BMP?

Re:

[hritcu]

And why the hell aren't they using PNG instead of BMP?

Maybe they are using Microsoft Paint [youtube.com] for post-processing.

Anyone know the location of their webserver?

[seriesrover]

In about half an hour you'll be able to see a flume of smoke rising from the building - it'll be the first time we can physically see a slashdotting in action.

The suspense is killing me.

Re:

[Country_hacker]

Check out the Firefox extension Shazou [mozilla.org], it gives you the location of any server in a google maps window. This particular server is in Rome.

Quality

[Nom du Keyboard]

To avoid filling up their disks too quickly, only the bmp of the last 30 days are available but jpg are kept.

My whole house could disappear as a JPEG compression artifact.

How about TIFF with LZW compression as a compromise?

Re:Quality

[necro2607]

"My whole house could disappear as a JPEG compression artifact."

Holy crap, have you ever seen that 3d-animated show Reboot? I just got this really vivid image of a neighbourhood being destroyed as though it was whipped up in some kind of digital tornado, and sucked up into whatever unknown void... "AAhhhhh shit THEY USED JPEG!!!!!!! Run for your lives!!"

This is FANTASTIC!!!

[GoatMonkey2112]

Now I'll be able to see pictures of the earth and it will be almost like I'm there!

Huge demand for near-realtime satellite imagery

[heroine]

While everyone scrambles to make portable mp3 players and game stations and search engines, this huge demand for near-realtime satellite imagery is going unfilled. In countries with crazy inflation and concentrated job growth, it's common to buy land far far away from the jobs instead of saving cash.

Satellite imagery could allow those people to see the current condition of their assets and the surrounding area at any time. It would allow them to buy more assets without having to travel there. People who are now watching their cash investments disappear in the flood of inflation would have a chance to survive.

The UK server doesn't have enough bandwidth to do it but maybe if someone looked away from their Macworld program for a second they could offer a live version of Google maps.

Re:

[DerekLyons]

While everyone scrambles to make portable mp3 players and game stations and search engines, this huge demand for near-realtime satellite imagery is going unfilled.

Mostly because there *isn't* a huge demand for near-realtime imagery outside of the geek 'oh wow man this is cool' community.

The UK server doesn't have enough bandwidth to do it but maybe if someone looked away from their Macworld program for a second they could offer a live version of Google maps.

Do you know why Google Maps/Eart

Hey, what is that I see?

[chinton]

Is it the High Fivin' White Guys?

Hehe... Envisat?

[Jugalator]

Was that one named for ESA being envious of another space organization? Or others successes in launching Mars vehicles?

Hmm... I wonder which that could be. :-)

(note: I'm European too; this isn't a cocky American.. just found the name funny)

Quote

[jagdish]

What are all these other places I see apart from America?

Interesting-- what about NIGHTTIME shots?

[Kazoo the Clown]

I want to surf for light polluting cities. Do any of these satellite map sites give you the nighttime images?

Not much better than a weather satellite

[heroine]

After getting in on Windows Flash 9 and between European server crashes, it appears this service is just a very hyped weather satellite viewer. It's even lower resolution than the weather satellite images you can download every 30 minutes. Score another point for extremely hyped ESA innovations that do absolutely nothing.

Whew

[StikyPad]

Also, only regions receiving light can be seen, which explains why no recent pictures of Thailand are available

Oh thank God. I thought Thailand had finally had enough and just left.

Google Maps is off-topic

[mrchaotica]

The point of this thing is that the pictures are "almost live." The imagery in Google Maps tends to be several years old. It's not the same thing at all.

Re:

[Pinkfud]

I think the time delay is perfectly reasonable. Amazing, in fact. Once the site escapes from the /. cloud so I can actually use it, I plan to do some research there. I suspect a number of governments will think the delay is much too short - no time to censor things!

Re:

[Lauritz]

No, it's "much more live than Google Earth" which shows images that might be recorded years ago, and "less live than the LIVE, you see on TV" which shows images that might show images that are just recorded a few seconds ago.

Be like Billy...

[MS-06FZ]

"almost live."

Is that like "almost funny"

Oddly enough, yes [imdb.com].

Though I do have fond memories of Billy Quan, The Lame List (or, "What's Weak This Week"), and the super-hero SPEED-WALKER! Plus you can see Bill Nye in his pre-Science-Guy days.

Re:Are we still alive?

[interstellar_donkey]

No, it means we were almost dead two hours ago.

Re:

[ModernGeek]

Yes, there was a typo. It actually sees 20 minutes into the future.