Starship Asterisk*

Hello - does anyone out there know of a source for up to the moment imagery of the planet? - I guess i'm hoping to find that there is an equivalent to 'google earth' but essentially in real time ie. 'Live' ?? Any suggestions??

The closest thing I can think of is weather satallite images. Or hacking into a military orbital observation satallite

satoron wrote:Hello - does anyone out there know of a source for up to the moment imagery of the planet? - I guess i'm hoping to find that there is an equivalent to 'google earth' but essentially in real time ie. 'Live' ?? Any suggestions??

Hi satoron. Unfortunately, there are no where near enough satellites up there to give us live feeds from every point on earth at our beck and call. The high resolution images you see on google earth were painstakingly taken over years and stitched together.

The closest thing you will ever get to a 'live' google earth is a military satellite (or access to a commercial one), and then you'll be able to tell it where to look... but satellites are EXPENSIVE and those who have them don't seem to want to lend them

You might try MODIS. I have been using it lately to track the fires in California.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Their version of "real time" might not be what you are looking for though. And as always there is cloud cover all around. Google earth does a good job of only showing you photos of places where there are no clouds. You can imagine sometimes they have a hard time getting the satellite, sun, earth, and clouds all to be in the right spot at the right time to take some of their images for particularly cloudy places.

[quote="BMAONE23"]The closest thing I can think of is weather satallite images. Or hacking into a military orbital observation satallite[/quote
Sounds interesting , but tricky! ... How about weather satelite access? - any thoughts?

I can imagine if you hacked a military satellite someone might be knocking on your door soon too.

geckzilla wrote:You might try MODIS. I have been using it lately to track the fires in California.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Their version of "real time" might not be what you are looking for though. And as always there is cloud cover all around. Google earth does a good job of only showing you photos of places where there are no clouds. You can imagine sometimes they have a hard time getting the satellite, sun, earth, and clouds all to be in the right spot at the right time to take some of their images for particularly cloudy places.

Wow Geck - Thanks! this is getting me close to what i'm after!! - sorry i'm not yet fluent with this reply program , not sure how to send a signal back to you without using the 'quote' -any suggestions welcomed!

Hehe, don't worry, the way the message board works is unless you are subscribed to a topic you just keep checking back to see where new posts are. Quote or no quote I usually read every reply at this forum since it's relatively quiet here.

geckzilla wrote:Hehe, don't worry, the way the message board works is unless you are subscribed to a topic you just keep checking back to see where new posts are. Quote or no quote I usually read every reply at this forum since it's relatively quiet here.

Good - How do i post a reply without having to display the previous message? The 'Modis' site is quite large and will take some time to navigate - lots of fun!
still interested to find access to more 'Live' feeds -am mostly interested in weather studies - so clouds are part of the picture! -must off now , to work outdoors!! - cheers - s.a.t.o.

You can just erase the quote if you don't want it there in the message body before you submit. Or you can find the little buttons at the top and bottom of a thread that say "post reply" ... phpbb isn't designed so that you only reply to a single person. Rather, you just write a reply to a topic in general.

As far as finding actual live satellite imagery of the earth, I think you are unlikely to find it though I won't say it's impossible that it exists. The reason being that any site like that would very easily use a lot of bandwidth even at a reduced frame rate of perhaps 5 or 1 per second. Due to the nature of satellite imagery (it has to be served at high resolution with low compression or it's really quite worthless other than for novelty) it would be extremely expensive to provide a service like this to the public.

I'm also rather sure that anyone who owns a satellite has their own use for it rather than to provide random areas of the earth viewable on the internet.

If all you want to look at is clouds though I have used this quite often:
http://www.my-cast.com/
They have free loops of infrared and visible satellite imagery available at 15 minute intervals if you are zoomed in close enough. But keep in mind it's not an actual view of the earth but rather an overlay of the clouds on top of an illustration. It's also USA only.

It's funny, I think even if you were to launch your own satellite, there are a bunch of international laws you have to follow and there is also a maximum resolution they'll allow you to have as a civilian lest you use it for spy purposes.

Here are some interesting possibilities

WEATHER
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/GOES/

Or here (Haven’t tried it yet)
http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/

And something new from Google Earth
http://googlesightseeing.com/2007/04/01 ... gle-earth/

Bma, that last link was an april fool's joke.

SHOOT
Missed the date entirely. Great catch. would have been nice though. The google earth images in that area though are really clear though don't know the date taken. You can tell if the people are Blonde, Brunette, or Red Head.

http://Maps.Live.Com

is another good place for fairly timely images

Thanks again BMA123 and the mighty Geck*! : lot's to search/find with your links!
I'm looking for 'full disc' views , of fairly recent images - i think they are in reach - and maybe i've found the reply button 2 ?/!
cheers and photons!
s.a.t.o.

Thanks Rover! - this 'll keep me going for a while...Here's another one for someone ... can we find a site/'sat.' that would be able to show us the moon rise over the edge of the Earth's horizon ,perhaps the whole disk ? - what orbit would be required to have that vehicle in the correct position to be able to see the moon rise each evening ?
photons!
s.a.t.o.