Earth, observed. Standout photographs from NASA's Earth Observatory website.
posted by homunculus on Jan 14, 2009 - 11 comments

Baghdad nights: evaluating the US military ‘surge’ using nighttime light signatures (PDF). A team of UCLA geographers using satellite imagery to track the amount of light emitted in Baghdad at night found that electricity use in Sunni neighborhoods fell prior to the surge and never returned, indicating that ethnic cleansing by Shiite militias drove the Sunnis away before the surge began and was largely responsible for the subsequent decrease in violence. [Via Passport]
posted by homunculus on Sep 23, 2008 - 33 comments

Satellites Document War, Destruction From Outer Space. The AAAS's Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project uses high-resolution satellite photography to detect and call attention to human rights violations.
posted by homunculus on Jun 15, 2008 - 13 comments

Satellite images reveal shrimp trawlers' turbulent trails. Vessels turn firm sea bottoms into ooze, destroying habitats. [Via Gristmill.]
posted by homunculus on May 12, 2007 - 11 comments

Mt. Erebus from space. NASA's Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment software, which controls the Earth Observing-1 spacecraft, took some amazing images of the lava lake of Antarctica's Mount Erebus volcano without any human interaction. [Via Fark.]
posted by homunculus on Jun 27, 2004 - 14 comments