Lighthouses of Europe
January 25, 2022 2:29 PM   Subscribe

 
..and North and South America, Asia, Oceania, and Africa.

The most interesting part of this page is that the light colors and flashing patterns are reflective of the lighthouses' real behavior.
posted by riotnrrd at 2:34 PM on January 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


I would LOVE to be able to click on a light and get details on that specific lighthouse.

But even with that said... this is awesome.
posted by DreamerFi at 2:40 PM on January 25, 2022 [5 favorites]


Viewed globally, it's shiny and sparkly -- like Attention Deficit Disorder the Movie.
posted by y2karl at 2:41 PM on January 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


TIL that there are lighthouses on the Danube
posted by chavenet at 2:56 PM on January 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


Some lighthouses of Europe. Ushant (FR: Ouessant) has a bunch of light houses but none seem to be operational on the map. I don't have line of sight from my window to confirm it is on but my local lighthouse doesn't seem to be showing as operational. Its a celebrity lighthouse too, being the setting for the UK version of Fraggle Rock.
posted by biffa at 3:37 PM on January 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Both of the Fair Isle lighthouses are missing, yet should be in the OSM data extract the author is using.

This map is dead to me.
posted by scruss at 3:43 PM on January 25, 2022


Huh, that's interesting, but I wonder where they get their data from. Because it's missing half the US west coast: it's missing everything from Point Bonita (north of SF) to the Canadian border.
posted by suelac at 3:54 PM on January 25, 2022


... and it's missing the lighthouses in Hawai'i, as well, including the single largest fresnel lens in the US.
posted by suelac at 3:57 PM on January 25, 2022


Both of the Fair Isle lighthouses are missing, yet should be in the OSM data extract the author is using.

The site is pulling all OSM elements with seamark:light:sequence attributes. It looks like the Fair Isle lights are listed as Sectored Lights, which have the format seamark:light:#:<attribute>, so they won't show up in that search.

Skroo North Lighthouse has seamark:light:1:sequence = 0.6+(2),0.6+(26.8).
Skaddan South Lighthouse has seamark:light:1:sequence = 0.2+(3.6),0.2+(3.6),0.2+(3.6),0.2+(18.4)
posted by zamboni at 4:56 PM on January 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


Ah, so the OSM data doesn't have the coding, which, given the geographic scope, means the source data doesn't have the proper code either.

Wonder where OSM pulls its data from.
posted by suelac at 5:20 PM on January 25, 2022


Point Bonita (north of SF)

the single largest fresnel lens in the US.

Point Bonita and Makapu'u Point are in OSM, but as buildings. I don't see associated nodes with seamark:light, so there's nothing for the map to find and display.
posted by zamboni at 5:20 PM on January 25, 2022


Wonder where OSM pulls its data from.

Anyone with a GPS and a kind heart, pretty much. Think of it as Wikipedia for map dorks.
posted by zamboni at 5:23 PM on January 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Why is Norway so lit up?
posted by bartleby at 5:51 PM on January 25, 2022


Fjords and islands?
posted by zamboni at 6:56 PM on January 25, 2022


One thing I've learned pulling Europe data from OSM, Norwegian contributors are unbelievably through (based on my experience mapping sport equipment locations anyway).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 7:02 PM on January 25, 2022 [6 favorites]


Why is Norway so lit up?

All the crinkly bits.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:38 PM on January 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Why is Norway so lit up?

Because most of Norway is still in deep winter and hasn't had a sunrise in months?
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM on January 25, 2022


Why is Norway so lit up?

Most lighthouses on the map are navigational buoys, not archetypal lighthouses. Compare this map of Northern Chesapeake bay. Each drop-shaped marker is a buoy with a light.

The Norwegian editors probably uploaded the national data set of buoys. The US also publishes their lightlists. The legend is actually very helpful
posted by Psychnic at 9:16 PM on January 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


First impression: Holy mother-f*****g light on a stick this is tremendous! God this is so cool!
Second impression, on zooming in, "... wait, where's the light at Bastdorf (Baltic coast of Germany, west of Rostock - a huge light on a hill, was a significant navigational point for centuries. Really, centuries)... read through comments, realise everyone else has had a similar experience and then the added bonus of seeing someone dug quickly into the code, revealing the source of the data and the why, if inadvertently, the Bastdorf light isn't listed...

Third impression: This is very cool. But obviously it would be nice to have the chart data attached to each light - that is, if not interval (which is illustrated)... on zooming in, the light no longer becomes an huge circle obscuring everything, but maybe a circle of the color of the light, then it's actual location on the map/chart.

This is cool, though. Nice.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:41 PM on January 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


There’s a similar map here which seems to have more, and are clickable so that you can at least identify which lighthouse it is. It also includes buoys and small beacons.
posted by scorbet at 3:25 AM on January 26, 2022 [4 favorites]


Hark, Triton, Hark! Bellow, and bid our father, the sea king, rise up from the depths, full-foul in his fury, black waves teeming with salt-foam, to smother this young mouth with pungent slime.. to choke ye, engorging yer organs till ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more... only when, he, crowned in cockle shells with slithering tentacled tail and steaming beard, takes up his fell, be-finnèd arm -– his coral-tined trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and runs you through the gullet, bursting ye, a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now -- a nothing for the Harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon, only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the dread emperor himself, forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea... for any stuff or part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul, is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:33 AM on January 26, 2022


scorbet's link, click sorbet's link. That is some serious, nerdery - that is a link I will bookmark and forward. Actually, a likely good teaching tool. Very nice.
posted by From Bklyn at 4:13 AM on January 26, 2022


"But it may be fine--I expect it will be fine," said Mrs. Ramsay, making
some little twist of the reddish brown stocking she was knitting,
impatiently. If she finished it tonight, if they did go to the Lighthouse
after all, it was to be given to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy,
who was threatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old
magazines, and some tobacco, indeed, whatever she could find lying about,
not really wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor
fellows, who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but
polish the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden,
something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for a whole
month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size
of a tennis lawn? she would ask; and to have no letters or newspapers, and
to see nobody; if you were married, not to see your wife, not to know how
your children were,--if they were ill, if they had fallen down and broken
their legs or arms; to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week,
and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and
birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be
able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea?
How would you like that?
sez Virginia Woolf.
posted by BobTheScientist at 5:29 AM on January 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Zoom out and it's the whole world.

Although a bunch of them are incorrect or missing. I worked for a bit on fixing this back when it was first created (2019/2020) but the OpenSeaMap/OpenStreetMap lighthouse flashing pattern specification is a bit ambiguous and confusing and I didn't fully figure out how this lighthouse map app was interpreting it. Maybe I'll go back and try again? https://github.com/reedhedges/lighthousemap if anyone wants to help. (Also I thought I submitted a bunch of missing lighthouses in Maine and Massachusetts to OSM but don't see them in the map, but perhaps it's using a cached copy.)
posted by thefool at 7:34 AM on January 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Suddenly everyone is a pharologist.... google it! (I had to)
posted by piyushnz at 7:46 AM on January 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


I spent six years as a professional pharologist. It was kinda cool, and fun for cocktail parties.
posted by suelac at 8:33 AM on January 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


(Also I thought I submitted a bunch of missing lighthouses in Maine and Massachusetts to OSM but don't see them in the map, but perhaps it's using a cached copy.)

Per the Readme on github, "The current version uses an extracted dataset". Looking at the repo, data-full.json hasn't been touched since Jun 28, 2019.
posted by zamboni at 10:25 AM on January 26, 2022


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