APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
it's worth mention that if the earth's diameter in relation to the span of the north american continent really were that small, it's probable that the earth's atmosphere would have long ago escaped and we'd be living on something resembling arid mars. oh wait, we wouldn't be living at all, because evolution would never have happened.
Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
I finally managed to look at the picture at full resolution. It is indeed a marvelous image. I take it that the aqua-green color of parts of the ocean means that the water is shallow here. Or maybe not? Maybe it just means erosion?
It is indeed amazing that we see so few signs of the great cities of the North American west coast. In Florida, we do see signs of the gridworks of civilization.
The various cloud formations that we see are indeed amazing, too.
I checked out my terrestrial globe at home, and I must agree that North and Central America are not as big in relation to the entire "face of the Earth" as they appear to be here.
But it is a truly fantastic and amazing image!
Ann
It is indeed amazing that we see so few signs of the great cities of the North American west coast. In Florida, we do see signs of the gridworks of civilization.
The various cloud formations that we see are indeed amazing, too.
I checked out my terrestrial globe at home, and I must agree that North and Central America are not as big in relation to the entire "face of the Earth" as they appear to be here.
But it is a truly fantastic and amazing image!
Ann
Color Commentator
Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
I tried viewing the image as you suggested. It was all blurry and my eye hurt after six seconds or so. Also, my forehead left a great grease print on the screenneufer wrote:The distortion comes from the fact that the perspective is presented as if from an NPP satellite a mere 824 kilometers above Earth.lunartrax wrote:
This undeniably beautiful pic still seems to have been made with some distortion in size and shape.
At that altitude the edges of the Earth are about 62º off from Nadir (looking straight down).
Hence the NPP Blue Marble Earth should properly be viewed with a single eye about 2.4 inches above most computer screens.
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
¡VIVA MÉXICO!
The 50,000 deaths due to bad UN XX-century drug regulation are too small to be seen in this beautiful image.
The 50,000 deaths due to bad UN XX-century drug regulation are too small to be seen in this beautiful image.
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Semihemidemi-Hemisphere
neufer wrote:The distortion comes from the fact that the perspective is presented as if from an NPP satellite a mere 824 kilometers above Earth.lunartrax wrote:
This undeniably beautiful pic still seems to have been made with some distortion in size and shape.
At that altitude the edges of the Earth are about 62º off from Nadir (looking straight down).
Hence the NPP Blue Marble Earth should properly be viewed with a single eye about 2.4 inches above most computer screens.
It would be closer to the size of Callisto actually.drollere wrote:
it's worth mention that if the earth's diameter in relation to the span of the north american continent really were that small, it's probable that the earth's atmosphere would have long ago escaped and we'd be living on something resembling arid mars.
- Visible Fraction of Earth's Hemisphere as viewed
from a given height of h is = h/(R+h) where R = 6,371.0 km
Visible Fraction of Hemisphere observed:
12% : 824km Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP
85% : 35,786 km Blue Marble Earth from GOES
88% : 45,000 km Blue Marble Earth from Apollo 17
Art Neuendorffer
Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
Excuse, but............
..............................it sure seems like the North American Continent is WAY out of proportion relative to the size of the sphere it is on.
AM I WRONG HERE??????
Where's Greenland, and the rest of South America??????
AM I WRONG HERE?????
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
..............................it sure seems like the North American Continent is WAY out of proportion relative to the size of the sphere it is on.
AM I WRONG HERE??????
Where's Greenland, and the rest of South America??????
AM I WRONG HERE?????
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
You are not wrong...just late.MarvinSigal wrote:Excuse, but............
..............................it sure seems like the North American Continent is WAY out of proportion relative to the size of the sphere it is on.
Where's Greenland, and the rest of South America??????
AM I WRONG HERE?????
Only 12% of a hemisphere is observable from NPP's height. (See above.)
Art Neuendorffer
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
However, NPP's height isn't really relevant here, and does not define what we can or cannot see. That decision was made by whoever chose this particular projection for the data. No camera on NPP can provide a view like this at any time.neufer wrote:Only 12% of a hemisphere is observable from NPP's height. (See above.)
Chris
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
LA, San Diego and Tijuana are quite visible as patches of grey concrete like tooth fillings. Mexico city is covered in cloud...tcumming wrote:Still I was half expecting some hints of where major cities are. Maybe we aren't scarring the planet up quite as bad as it might seem when we are down in a metropolitan area that takes two hours to drive across.
Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
That's a point. There is a lot of cloud here. How do you control the cloud formations in this software? Even if you choose a date for your image data, these clouds would shift as the satellite takes its images. If these clouds are always in the same place, New Yorkers would be frustrated that they can only see a bit of long island poking out.
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
That decision was made to present a view of Earth just asChris Peterson wrote:However, NPP's height isn't really relevant here, and does not define what we can or cannot see. That decision was made by whoever chose this particular projection for the data. No camera on NPP can provide a view like this at any time.neufer wrote:
Only 12% of a hemisphere is observable from NPP's height. (See above.)
it would have been observed by a fisheye camera aboard NPP.
I.e., the horizon is exactly the same horizon that would be
observed by NPP if it's scanning cameras could actually see out to the horizon.
Art Neuendorffer
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
Understood. But the point is, it was a decision, unrelated to any physical constraints of the imaging system. I think it is important to emphasize that, since as a simple image, there is nothing extraordinary about today's APOD. What makes it special is that it was built from a much richer data set than any single image could represent.neufer wrote:That decision was made to present a view of Earth just as
it would have been observed by a fisheye camera aboard NPP.
It's too easy for people to look at today's image and think it's just a shot made from one of the cameras on this spacecraft.
Chris
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
Thanks for the link to Alan Bean's pages and the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals... which is accessed via the "Blue Marble Earth" link at the bottom of today's descriptive paragraph. I live for art and writing, and I was happy to spend time today inspired by Astronaut Bean's works. My favorites were "Hadley Rille", and "An Astronaut's Journey"- with Harrison "Jack" Schmitt's story.
Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
no more blue planets detected out there?
Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
What about Kepler?deathfleer wrote:no more blue planets detected out there?
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
Is there images that show other parts of the world, like Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, Arctic?
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
Sure... here's the whole world for you: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=76674Brian O Dowd wrote:Is there images that show other parts of the world, like Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica, Arctic?
Future images will probably end up here: http://npp.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/sciencecollection.html
I don't think there is a website that publishes the raw data the satellite is producing, though.
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
It's too easy for people to look at this image and think it's another yet stunning image madeChris Peterson wrote:
It's too easy for people to look at today's image and think it's just a shot made from one of the cameras on this spacecraft.
from distant space such as from an Apollo mission or even a geostationary satellite like GOES.
Rather....people SHOULD, indeed, think of it as a fisheye camera shot from a spacecraft a mere 500 miles above the earth.
The small (6%) piece of Earth displayed is NOT very blue & NOT very marble like
and it should NOT have been presented as a "Blue Marble Earth" IMO.
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
I disagree. If this is how people see the image, they are entirely missing the point of the APOD!neufer wrote:Rather....people SHOULD, indeed, think of it as a fisheye camera shot from a spacecraft a mere 500 miles above the earth.
It's like looking at an image from Google Earth over your town, and thinking that Google Earth is just that image.
Chris
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
The point of the APOD is that this is somehow a "Blue Marble Earth."Chris Peterson wrote:I disagree. If this is how people see the image, they are entirely missing the point of the APOD!neufer wrote:Rather....people SHOULD, indeed, think of it as a fisheye camera shot from a spacecraft a mere 500 miles above the earth.
It isn't
![Exclamation :!:](./images/smilies/icon_exclaim.gif)
Google Earth requires a considerable amount processing so that it has no clouds.Chris Peterson wrote:
It's like looking at an image from Google Earth over your town, and thinking that Google Earth is just that image.
This is a quasi-synoptic fisheye view of the Earth from NPP involving minimal processing.
No one (but you) cares that it didn't actually involve a fisheye lens camera.
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
But it is. It's a synthesized image made from a much larger database of imagery. That is the meaning of "blue marble" in today's lingo.neufer wrote:The point of the APOD is that this is somehow a "Blue Marble Earth."
It isn't :!:
No it doesn't. There are clouds in Google imagery. And all they do is filter their particular blue marble dataset so that it contains only data with cloud cover below some threshold. That isn't real time processing.Google Earth requires a considerable amount processing so that it has no clouds.
This one particular image was synthesized from that viewpoint. And I'd bet it required almost identical routines to those used by Google Earth. In fact, I'd think there's a good chance they used the World Wind code, which was developed by NASA for displaying Blue Marble datasets (there are a number, encompassing different times of year and different weather).This is a quasi-synoptic fisheye view of the Earth from NPP involving minimal processing.
You assume a lot about what other people care about!No one (but you) cares that it didn't actually involve a fisheye lens camera.
If this were just a fisheye image made from yet another Earth observing satellite, it would be rather boring, I think. Ho hum... been there, done that. But satellites that are continuously adding high resolution imagery to a database which can be used to synthesize Earth views over time, space, and viewpoint... that's exciting!
Chris
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
This new image emphasizes the difference between an ordinary image from a satellite and a "blue marble" type image. Although both images were prepared from the same data set, the western hemisphere image was synthesized to give a view equivalent to what you'd see from 800 km high, while the eastern hemisphere image was synthesized to give a view equivalent to what you'd see from 13,000 km high. This ability to choose the viewpoint after the data is collected demonstrates the power of the blue marble approach.
Chris
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
This approach has certainly been proven valuable - just consider Google Earth, for example. The capability to merge simple visual aspects of control/display information detail and perspective (which most people easily relate to) with accessable, detailed scientific data (which most people don't relate to easily) is a real achievement. I believe we are currently living in a golden age of observational technology, and it's only going to get better!Chris Peterson wrote:This new image emphasizes the difference between an ordinary image from a satellite and a "blue marble" type image. Although both images were prepared from the same data set, the western hemisphere image was synthesized to give a view equivalent to what you'd see from 800 km high, while the eastern hemisphere image was synthesized to give a view equivalent to what you'd see from 13,000 km high. This ability to choose the viewpoint after the data is collected demonstrates the power of the blue marble approach.
On a separate more traditional note, I personally like the Eastern Hemisphere Blue Marble over the western version. At 13,000 km, its low-distortion mapping recreates a good satellite snapshot image. I feel more "at home" when looking at it. Maybe Art felt this way too based on his comments. To show a comparable view, a Google Earth image (at the same altitude) is overlayed below (move your cursor over it). The two images are almost indistinguishable geographically. However, distortion prevents this out-of-the box comparison from working well with the western hemisphere version.
Lastly, I'd like to clarify one point: The Western Hemisphere Blue Marble is effectively viewed from an altidude 2x higher than discussed. Identifiable US and South American features require a minimum altitude of 820 miles, and because these features are not exactly on the horizon/limb (and therefore require a higher vantage point), I estimate a reasonable viewing altitude ≈1000 miles (1600 km).
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Re: APOD: Blue Marble Earth from Suomi NPP (2012 Jan 30)
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil;
all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care,
the work and the love we give our fragile craft. ~ Adlai Stevenson ~ Geneva (09 July 1965)
Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (5 February 1900 – 14 July 1965)
all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care,
the work and the love we give our fragile craft. ~ Adlai Stevenson ~ Geneva (09 July 1965)
Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (5 February 1900 – 14 July 1965)
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor