MetaFilter posts tagged with satellite and planet

September 2007 polar sea ice anomaly

sergeant sandwich — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:49:59 -0800

Video (8MB, MPEG) of arctic sea ice extent, recorded from January to September 2007. [other formats] This summer a dramatic decrease compared to previous years in the extent of the north pole ice cap was observed. Scientists are freaked out [bugmenot]. This summer, the Northwest Passage was open for a few weeks, allowing three ships to traverse it. This data was taken by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. Comparison with past years. More information here.

300 miles up

crunchland — Mon, 15 Sep 2003 20:45:57 -0800

300 miles up.

keli — Tue, 03 Sep 2002 12:25:27 -0800

World on Fire is brought to us by the fun kids at NASA, showing satellite images of active fires around the planet on July 11, 2002. "Across the world, the widespread fires that burn each year in the savannas of Africa, Australia, and Brazil dwarf even the most significant fire season in the western United States as far as total acreage and number of fires." NOVA Online has its own set of images from 2000 as well.

crunchland — Wed, 24 Jan 2001 07:38:41 -0800

If you want to try playing with little planets or images of them, try visiting these websites...

Webearth -- builds a LIVE vrml model of the Earth as it is right now. It draws from current composite satellite photos. Or you can play with a VRML Moon, Venus, Mars or Jupiter, if you'd prefer. (Note: this site does require a VRML 2.0 compatible plug-in, like Parallel Graphics Cortona VRML Viewer.)

Here's an oldie, but a goodie... Same concept, just not live. Earth and Moon Viewer uses various static composite satellite images from many different points of view, and it lets you zoom in and out ... (to a certain extent).

Webwide World lets you zoom in on an earth-like planet... not quite the same thrill, but the images the site produces are beautifully gem-like. And the planet it produces is huge. You'll be able explore islands off the coasts of islands off the coasts of islands.

And for more satellite image zooming pleasure, you can't beat Microsoft's Terra Server.