Comments on: Moonies

Moonies

nervestaple — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:36:19 -0800

Google Moon - Google Maps gets the Lunar treatment, in honor of the first manned moon landing. No directions, though, so you won't be able to plot the best route from Tycho Crater to Mare Imbrium. (Fun Hint! - try the maximum zoom level)

By: lacus

lacus — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:51:23 -0800

Anybody ever notice all those little round marks on the moon? I wonder what they are?

By: lee

lee — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:56:02 -0800

I zoomed all the way, now I am hungry!

By: Grod

Grod — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:58:18 -0800

lame joke, but I can't wait for a Google Solar System done like Google Earth

By: peacay

peacay — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 01:10:39 -0800

"Giant lava lamps filled with biomass suspended in seawater generate oxygen for the complex" They go to a lot of trouble and a number of pages with the Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.). Don't these people actually work?

By: Rothko

Rothko — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 01:19:39 -0800

If Microsoft did stuff like this, people wouldn't think they're so evil.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 01:21:15 -0800

What, Paperclip and Bob weren't not-evil enough for you?

By: TwelveTwo

TwelveTwo — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 01:45:59 -0800

Bob was the greatest!

By: Mr Ed

Mr Ed — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 01:56:02 -0800

Hey Grod... Try this: Celestia... The free space simulation

By: fandango_matt

fandango_matt — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 01:58:19 -0800

I can't wait for saturn.google.com so I can find Sun Ra's house!

By: bap98189

bap98189 — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 02:10:25 -0800

G.C.H.E.E.S.E is recruiting.

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 02:25:16 -0800

They need to recruit a sketch writer.

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 03:11:33 -0800

I can't wait for saturn.google.com so I can find Sun Ra's house! I went over to see Sun Ra a few times. He was pretty far out there.

By: Rothko

Rothko — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 04:23:55 -0800

I sent them an email at the address they listed, but the message was returned with an "address doesn't exist" error. Anyone else try sending them email?

By: sciurus

sciurus — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 05:03:35 -0800

I'd like to point out that Selenographia has been around for quite some time.

By: beagle

beagle — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 05:22:27 -0800

Looks like the Arizona desert to me.

By: nervousfritz

nervousfritz — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 05:34:51 -0800

If you zoom out all the way you can see it's just the lunar landing vicinity pasted together three times. I was wondering how they would have managed the dark side.

By: PlusDistance

PlusDistance — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 05:37:54 -0800

Try zooming all the way in, nervousfritz

By: i_cola

i_cola — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 05:52:34 -0800

That's no moon...

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 06:16:23 -0800

This is cool. I've just been rereading Red Mars, and marvelling at how detailed Robinson is about what it's like to actually be on Mars. He must have spent just hours reading charts and imagining before writing. This reminds me a little of that, except for the green cheese part.

By: Jikido

Jikido — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 06:21:30 -0800

that's cheesy....

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 08:27:48 -0800

That's really awesome! And on a random side-note: My best friend was just hired by Google as a product manager! I rule by proxy!

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 08:40:14 -0800

nervousfritz, the dark side, otherwise known as the far side of the moon isn't actually dark. It's just pointing away from us, and enjoys just as much light as the side we see from Earth. It was first photographed in 1959, and the Lunar Orbiter misisons in the 60s mapped 99% of the moon's surface in up to 1 meter resolution (comparable to Google Maps/Earth resolution). In fact, that's probably where Google Moon's data came from. You are right, though, that it is lame that it's just the area around the Apollo landings. The data is out there for the whole moon, why not use it?

By: foraneagle2

foraneagle2 — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:07:55 -0800

how long are days/nights on the moon? and seasons?

By: nervousfritz

nervousfritz — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:16:20 -0800

isn't actually dark Duhhhh, :o) thanks for the update zsazsa. . .

By: swift

swift — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:24:47 -0800

As a matter of fact it's all dark.

By: Sonic_Molson

Sonic_Molson — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:46:23 -0800

Cool, but why cheese?

By: LeeJay

LeeJay — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 09:47:23 -0800

That's cute. Thanks for the headsup, nervestaple. And thanks to Mr Ed too for the link to Celestia. Between that and Noctis I will get very little done in the near future.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 10:19:56 -0800

foraneagle2: The moon is "tide-locked" to the earth---the same side always faces our planet. This means that it spins on its axis in exactly the same time that it takes to rotate the planet: a lunar month, or 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds. So night on the moon lasts about a fortnight. The moon does have seasons, it orbits at an angle to the solar ecliptic (the plane of the solar system), but again, it does the transit in a lunar month, so spring is morning and fall, twilight, if you will.

By: pmbuko

pmbuko — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 10:52:39 -0800

Mr Ed, Celestia crashed my Mac Mini (10.4.2) hard. Twice.

By: Four Flavors

Four Flavors — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 10:58:51 -0800

I was kinda hoping that I could zoom out and see the whole thing, but they only have 3 tiles, which seem to be duplicates of each other. I have an old National Geographic Moon Map I could send them to scan.

By: dmd

dmd — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:03:34 -0800

For those wondering why it's not green:

Thank you for your note about Google Moon. We hope you enjoyed today's tribute, and we appreciate your taking the time to contact us. This is an autoresponse to let you know that we've received your email, and we'll read it soon. If you notified us of a problem, we'll investigate right away and follow up with you if we can provide assistance. If you sent praise, we're happy to hear that you enjoyed surfing the lunar landscape and hope to provide you with more extensive Moon-oriented local information just 64 years from now. We'll also keep constructive feedback and suggestions - we know, you'd like to see Mars, too - in mind for the future. If you're wondering what type of cheese the moon is made of, we wish we could tell you. Conventional 20th century belief suggested that it was made of green cheese, but recent data has disproved this theory. Diligent research by the world's most preeminent scientists suggests that it's either havarti or gouda. We recognize that a sniff-off among our talented Google users would likely resolve these scientific disputes, so we're working on patented scratch-and-sniff technology. You didn't hear it from us, but if you get close enough to your monitor, you may be able to discern the cheese by smell. Thank you for taking the time to write. Regards, The Google Team

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:16:54 -0800

I think it's very lame this is not the whole moon.

By: obloquy

obloquy — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:09:42 -0800

We like the MOOON!

By: Floydd

Floydd — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:09:53 -0800

Havarti or Gouda?? Neither one has those holes, that's Swiss! And yellow is usually associated with a colored Chedder. It's no cheese with which I'm familiar, although it looks suspiciously like this. The question is, who's UNDER that hat???

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:36:36 -0800

I'm amused by the comments reading "lame - where's the rest of the moon?" Hell, my street isn't on Google Maps with adequate resolution, give them a break - let them finish the earth before moving on to other celestial bodies. At least they're working on it. I think it's fascinating.

By: The Deej

The Deej — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 15:46:00 -0800

What???? No Saturn????

By: nervestaple

nervestaple — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:28:36 -0800

I'm still looking for Ignignokt and Err.

By: sellout

sellout — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:08:28 -0800

Awww. Google's so cute and cuddly.

By: lacus

lacus — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 23:37:56 -0800

swift, excellent Pink Floyd reference

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:11:08 -0800

The "green" in "green cheese" doesn't mean it's colored green. It means "green" as in fresh or unaged.

By: RobotHero

RobotHero — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:42:44 -0800

The map doesn't have a scale, so I'm not clear on how far apart those landing sites are.